Dreaming the Actual: Contemporary Fiction and Poetry by Israeli Women Writers (Modern Jewish Lit Culture) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0791445585 ISBN 13: 9780791445587

Publisher: State University of New York Press, 2000

Synopsis

This anthology of contemporary fiction and poetry by Israeli women writers includes works originally written in Hebrew, Arabic, Russian, and English.

This book introduces the powerful and provocative new fiction and poetry of Israel's women writers to an English-speaking audience. Read together, the stories and poems in this book will help to create a more sophisticated understanding of Middle Eastern passions and realities, and will foster a wealth of discussion about the meanings of homeland, exile, and diaspora; women's sexuality and spirituality; gender roles; the legacy of the Holocaust; the tensions and reconciliations of religion and secular life; the effects of war; and the power of memory.

In her introduction, Miriyam Glazer vividly reconstructs the diversities, tensions, and complexity of current Israeli literature, and the book reflects the multiculturality of modern-day Israel by including stories and poems originally written in Arabic, Russian, Hebrew, and English. Brief biographical and critical introductions are provided for each writer, and the book features specially commissioned and new translations of twenty stories and seventy-five poems, many available here for the first time in English.

About this title

About the Author

Miriyam Glazer is Professor of Literature and Director of the Dortort Writers Institute at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles. She is the author of Burning Air and a Clear Mind: Contemporary Israeli Women Poets.

Reviews

This collection of contemporary fiction and poetry by Israeli women writers includes works originally written in Hebrew, Arabic, Russian, and English. Rather than constituting a cohesive group, these writers form more of a mosaic of different cultural types. They are multigenerational; they have come from many countries to Israel and have very different political, social, and religious backgrounds. The stories and poetry portray coming of age, the unease of sexuality, and much discussion of the meanings of homeland, exile, and diaspora in addition to many aspects of memory. In Nurit Zarchi!s Madame Bovary in Neve Tsedek, for instance, the power of women!s imagination and power is explored in a surrealistic framework. Along with another recent anthology, New Women!s Writing from Israel (Vallentine Mitchell, 1996), which does not include poetry, and numerous individually authored collections of short stories and novels (e.g., Zeruya Shalev!s Love Life, LJ 1/00), Israeli women writers are now well represented in English. They give English-speaking readers a window into Israeli culture, plus, in most cases, an awareness of Jewish sensibilities as seen by women."Molly Abramowitz, Silver Spring, MD
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0791445585
• ISBN 13: 9780791445587
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 414
• Editor: Glazer Miriyam