Intriguing Israeli Fiction
Discover captivating Israeli fiction with our curated list of intriguing books. Explore top novels that delve into Israel's rich culture, history, and compelling narratives.
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The Saturday Wife
by Naomi Ragen
With more than half a million copies of her novels sold, Naomi Ragen has connected with the hearts of readers as well as reviewers who have met her work with unanimous praise. In The Saturday Wife, Ragen utilizes her fluid writing style--rich with charm and detail--to break new ground as she harnesses satire to expose a world filled with contradiction. Beautiful, blonde, materialistc Delilah Levy steps into a life she could have never imagined when in a moment of panic she decides to marry a sincere Rabbinical student. But the reality of becoming a paragon of virtue for a demanding and hypocritical congregation leads sexy Delilah into a vortex of shocking choices which spiral out of control into a catastrophe which is as sadly believeable as it is wildly amusing. Told with immense warmth, fascinating insight, and wicked humor, The Saturday Wife depicts the pitched and often losing battle of all of us as we struggle to hold on to our faith and our values amid the often delicious temptations of the modern world.
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Avishag
by Yael Lotan
Of the scant female biblical characters, few are as intriguing as Avishag the Shunammite: a young girl brought from the obscurity to the court of aged King David, to warm the King's bed and stir his aged blood. As the sons of David- Adonijah the Judean and Solomon the Wise, - stake their claims, it is Avishag who will play the decisive role in the bloodly rivalry for the succession.
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Women's Minyan
by Naomi Ragen
"Naomi Ragen's first play premiered in 2002 at Israel's National Theater, Habimah, and had its American premiere at Duke University in North Carolina in 2005. It is based on a true story: a Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) woman, wife of a rabbi, mother of twelve, leaves her family for unspecified reasons. The woman is punished; the community's "modesty squad" prevents her from seeing her children, and the friend she is staying with is physically attacked. Desperate to regain access to her children, she determines that the women of her community must stand in judgement, hoping that once they hear the truth of why she left, they will allow her to be reunited with her children."--BOOK JACKET.
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See Under: LOVE
by David Grossman
Momik is the only child of two Holocaust survivors. Something in Momik pushes him into strange, perilous confrontations with the world of pain and love he is determined to avoid. By listening to a relative's special stories for and about children, Momik becomes "infected with humanity" and with the intense loving-kindness that exists alongside the horrors of his ancestry.
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Someone to Run With
by David Grossman
Capturing the lives of Israeli street kids, follows two teenagers--Assaf, a shy and awkward sixteen year old, and Tamar, a talented young singer--and the missing dog that brings them together.
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Four Meals
by Meir Shalev
Four Meals is the extraordinary story of Zayde, his enigmatic mother Judith and her three lovers.When Judith arrives in a small, rural village in Palestine in the early 1930s, three men compete for her attention: Globerman, the cunning, coarse cattle-dealer who loves women, money and flesh; Jacob, owner of hundreds of canaries and host to the four meals which lend the book its narrative structure; and Moshe, a widowed farmer obsessed with his dead wife and his lost braid of hair which his mother cut off in childhood.During the four meals, which take place intermittently over several decades, Zayde slowly comes to understand why these three men consider him their son and why all three participate in raising him.
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The Lover
by Abraham B. Yehoshua
A dreamlike story of a husbands obsessive search for his wifes lover amid the turbulence of the Yom Kippur War.--publisher.
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The Garden of Ruth
by Eva Etzioni-Halevy
The author deftly interweaves history and fiction to create a compelling exploration of a prominent biblical figure. Told through the voices of both Osnath, niece of the prophet Samuel, and Ruth, the work transports readers into an ancient world to offer a dramatic and thought-provoking perspective on a well-known tale.
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The Amos Oz Reader
by Amos Oz
A rich and varied selection of writings from the early sixties to the present by Amos Oz, one of Israel s leading novelists, public intellectuals, and political activists. The Amos Oz Reader draws on Oz's entire body of work and is loosely grouped into four themes: the kibbutz, the city of Jerusalem, the idea of a "promised land," and his own life story. Included are excerpts from his celebrated novels, among them Where the Jackals Howl, A Perfect Peace, My Michael, Fima, Black Box, and To Know a Woman. Nonfiction is represented by selections from Under This Blazing Light, The Slopes of Lebanon, In the Land of Israel, and Oz s masterpiece, A Tale of Love and Darkness. With an illuminating introduction by Robert Alter. Praise for A Tale of Love and Darkness "A[n] ingenious work that circles around the rise of a state, the tragic destiny of a mother, a boy s creation of a new self." The New Yorker "Detailed and beautiful As he writes about himself and his family, Oz is also writing part of the history of the Jews." Los Angeles Times AMOS OZ is a prize-winning novelist and essayist whose honors include the Prix Femina, the Israel Prize, the Frankfurt Peace Prize, and the Prince of Asturias Award for Letters. Most recently, his memoir, A Tale of Love and Darkness, received the Koret Jewish Book Award. He lives in Arad. NITZA BEN-DOV is Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at Haifa University, as well as a scholar of biblical poetics. ROBERT ALTER is an esteemed scholar and translator. His recent translations include The Book of Psalms and The Five Books of Moses. "
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Sotah
by Naomi Ragen
While living in Jerusalem, a young and striking woman is accused of adultery and banished from the country, and must find a way to reclaim her life in America.
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The Song of Hannah
by Eva Etzioni-Halevy
Once childhood friends, Hannah and Pninah become rivals for the man who has married them both. Despite their differences, the women must learn to live together while sharing the love of their husband, and that of Hannah's son Samuel, the future prophet.
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Friendly Fire
by A. B. Yehoshua
Leaving her husband at home, Daniela journeys from Tel Aviv to East Africa to mourn the death of her older sister and to confront her grieving brother-in-law, a scientist still struggling with the death of his soldier son in an incident of "friendly fire" on the West Bank.
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Rhyming Life and Death
by Amos Oz
Author's account of his long night." "He spends the rest of the night wandering, smoking, inventing, regretting and thinking till dawn, when he learns, by chance, of the death of a once famous poet, now barely remembered." --Book Jacket.
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The Loves of Judith
by Meir Shalev
Zayde Rabinovitch relates the story of his mother, Judith, the three men who loved her, and the mystery surrounding his paternity