Dave Eggers is the author of many books, including The Circle, The Monk of Mokha, What is the What, A Hologram for the King, and The Lifters. He is founder of McSweeney's, an independent publishing company based in San Francisco that produces books, a humor website, and a journal of new writing, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern. McSweeney’s also publishes Voice of Witness, a nonprofit book series that uses oral history to illuminate human rights crises around the world. Eggers is the co-founder of 826 National, a network of youth writing and tutoring centers around the United States.
Between 2007 and 2009 I lived and worked in Jerusalem. My apartment was in Abu Tor, a hillside district near Mount Zion and the border between Israel proper and the…