In flight from flaccid early 1960's England, flaky Kate Speed lands up in Jerusalem. The child and grandchild of Jewish communists, she knows that her place is always on the opposing side. This does not sit comfortably with her life in Israel after the June 1967 war, and she is forced to conform to a society that she comes to despise. "I Want to Grow Backwards" is about what happens in real life when you tinker with your most cherished beliefs. Oscillating between London and Jerusalem - and a sudden island in the Indian Ocean - Kate comes to realize that home is very different from one's nation, and sanity depends on where you live. A dense, and often funny, story of political dissonance, subversive sex, alienation, and ineluctable mental illness - and the state of modern Israel.