No Room of Their Own; Gender and Nation in Israeli Women's Fiction

Unlike the literary traditions of the United States, England, and France, the first century of Hebrew literature was lacking in women novelists; women tended to write poetry, while prose fiction was mainly the domain of male writers. Since the 1980s, however, there has been a virtual explosion of commercially successful Hebrew fiction by women that includes many traditionally male genres, such as the historical novel, fictional autobiography, and the mystery novel.

No Room of Their Own is a comparative analysis of recent Israeli fiction by women and some of its Western models, from Virginia Woolf and Simone de Beauvoir to Marilyn French and Marie Cardinal. Feldman shows the richness and subtleties of Israeli women's fiction as she explores the themes of gender and nation, as well as the (non)representation of the "New Hebrew Woman" in five authors―the "foremothers" of the contemporary boom in Israeli Women's fiction: Amalia Kahana-Carmon (Up on Montifer, With Her on Her Way Home), Shulamith Hareven (City of Many Days, Thirst, The Vocabulary of Peace), Netiva BenYehuda (The Palmach Trilogy), Ruth Almog (Women, The Story of a [Writer's] Block, Roots of Air), and Shulamit Lapid (Gei Oni).

Yael S. Feldman is Abraham I. Katsch Professor of Hebrew Culture and Education at New York University.