Zeruya Shalev

"Zeruya Shalev is one of my favorite contemporary writers, her work always spiky and original, and Pain is a searing book, a wild and ravenous story of family entanglement and impossible yearning." --Lauren Groff, author of Florida and Fates and Furies A powerful, astute novel that exposes how old passions can return, testing our capacity to make choices about what is most essential in life. Ten years after she was seriously injured in a terrorist attack, the pain comes back to torment Iris. But that is not all: Eitan, the love of her youth, also comes back into her life. Though their relationship ended many years ago, she was more deeply wounded when he left her than by the suicide bomber who blew himself up next to her. Iris's marriage is stagnant. Her two children have grown up and are almost independent; she herself has become a dedicated, successful school principal. Now, after years without passion and joy, Eitan brings them back into her life. But she must concoct all sorts of lies to conceal her affair from her family, and the lies become more and more complicated. Is this an impossible predicament, or on the contrary a scintillating revelation of the many ways life's twists and turns can bring us to a place we would never have expected to be?

A Novel

Pain

With shocking immediacy, Zeruya Shalev lays bare the story of Ya'ara, a young married woman who becomes entangled in a turbulent affair with a man in his fifties, seemingly an old friend of the family. She forsakes her devoted and well-meaning husband for this man who seems to embody all that she lacks: will, strength, and the key to her family's past. A literary tour de force and irresistible page-turner, Love Life is a searingly intelligent, seductive and provocative novel. Hailed by the New York Times as a book that 'broke all the barriers . . . sexually explicit yet dense with biblical allusion and psychological insight ', Love Life unbuttoned Hebrew literature and spent four months heading Israel's bestseller list. It is a dazzling debut that strikes to the core of sexual attraction, infidelity and self-destruction.

Love Life

Dopo la morte del padre, un famoso scienziato che fra le mura di casa esercitava una cupa tirannia, Atara, architetto cinquantenne dalla burrascosa vita sentimentale e madre di due figli, va in cerca del suo oscuro passato. Ritrovare la quasi centenaria prima moglie di lui e sentirla parlare della stagione eroica in cui entrambi facevano parte della resistenza clandestina contro gli inglesi prima della fondazione dello stato d’Israele non fa che infittire il mistero. E così le vite delle due donne, di Atara che non sa nulla di colei di cui porta il nome e che sembra essere la chiave per capire molte cose, e dell’anziana Rachel che aveva messo una pietra su quel passato, cambiano attraverso l’incontro, le loro parole ma forse soprattutto i rispettivi silenzi. Con la consueta maestria, Zeruya Shalev intesse una storia che è al tempo stesso profondamente singolare e collettiva, riuscendo a cucire insieme il dramma e l’ironia, la quotidianità più banale e i grandi eventi del passato recente.

Stupore

Życie miłosne

Erotische, sehr offen erzählte Geschichte der bedingungslosen Liebe der jungen Jerusalemer Universitätsdozentin Ja'ara zu dem egozentrischen Freund ihres Vaters.

Roman

Liebesleben

Die Begegnung mit Arie, einem alten Freund ihres Vaters, wirft das Leben der Ich-Erzählerin Ja'ara aus der Bahn. Vom ersten Moment an verfällt sie der erotischen Anziehungskraft des ebenso rätselhaften wie tyrannischen Egozentrikers. Ja'ara erlebt eine bedingungslose, obsessive und demütigende Liebesbeziehung, die sie dazu bringt, auf alles zu verzichten, was ihr Leben bisher ausgemacht hat: ihre Ehe, ihre Karriere, ihre Vorstellungen von Treue und Anstand.

Hemda Horovitz is nearing the end of her life. As she lies in bed in Jerusalem, memories from the past flood her thoughts: her childhood in the kibbutz spent under the gaze of her stern, pioneer father; the lake that was her only solace; and her own two children-one she could never love enough, and the other whom she loved too much. Avner, the beloved child, has grown up to be a heavy, anguished man, disillusioned by his work and trapped in a loveless marriage. When visiting his mother in the hospital, he witnesses a devoted couple's final moments together; after the man's death Avner becomes obsessed with finding the woman, and a strange and delicate relationship unfolds. Dina, Hemda's daughter, has put aside her career in order to give her teenage daughter, Nitzan, the warmth she never received from her own mother. But Nitzan is withdrawing from her, and Dina is overcome by a longing to adopt another child-a longing that, if fulfilled, may destroy her fragile family. Zeruya Shalev's electrifying new novel is at once a meditation on the state of modern Israel and a profound exploration of family, yearning, compromise, and the insistent pull of the past.

The Remains of Love

Co nam zostało

Durere

Schicksal

When Ya'ara meets Aryeh, her father's boyhood friend, she is immediately drawn to his impassive, archly assured presence. It is not long before she forsakes her devoted and well-meaning husband for the mysterious older man who seems to embody all that she lacks: strength, will, and the key to her parents' inaccessible pasts. Their affair soon spirals toward the destructive as Ya'ara finds that the things that attract her to Aryeh also repel her with equal intensity. With schocking immediacy, Shalev lays bare Ya'ara's struggle to navigate extreme terrain, ranging from the sublime to the grotesque, the sacred to the profane, the liberating to the all-consuming.

Schmerz

Dolore

From the Israeli author of Love Life: “a highly polished and . . . beautifully written story that carries great weights of meaning” (Kirkus Reviews). Zeruya Shalev achieved international literary stardom with her novel Love Life, which The Washington Post Book World called “a brutally honest and often brilliant tour of individual and family psychology.” In Husband and Wife, she takes us into the heartbreak and compromise of a diseased marriage that may or may not be capable of healing. Na’ama and Udi Newman, together with their young daughter Noga, lead a quiet domestic life. But their idyll abruptly ends when Udi—a perfectly healthy man—wakes up one morning unable to move his legs. The doctors can find no physical explanation for his paralysis. It appears to be a symptom, not of illness, but of something far more insidious. This mysterious disruption soon reveals a vicious cycle of jealousy, paranoia, resentment, and accumulated injuries that now threaten to tear their small family apart. In a rush of hallucinogenic imagery, Husband and Wife captures the vulnerability and deceptive comforts of lives intertwined, offering “an acutely intimate portrait of a relationship” (Donna Rifkind, The Baltimore Sun). “Nearly impossible to look away from.” —Elle

Husband and Wife

Hemda Horovitz is nearing the end of her life. As she lies in bed in Jerusalem, the present flickers in and out as memories from the past flood her thoughts: her childhood in the kibbutz spent under the disappointed gaze of her stern, pioneer father; the lake that was her only solace; and her own two children, one whom she could never love and the other whom she loved too much. Avner, the beloved child, has grown up to be a heavy, anguished man, disillusioned by his work and trapped in a loveless marriage. When visiting his mother in hospital he witnesses an elegant couple's final poignant moments together; after the man's death Avner becomes obsessed with finding the woman, and a strange and delicate relationship unfolds. Dina, Hemda's daughter, has put aside her career in order to give her teenage daughter, Nitzan, the warmth she never received from her own mother. But Nitzan is withdrawing from her, and as Dina slides into despair she is overcome by a longing to adopt a child - a longing that, if fulfilled, may destroy her fragile family. Zeruya Shalev's electrifying new novel is at once a meditation on the state of modern Israel and a profound exploration of family, yearning, compromise and the insistent pull of the past.

Chemda Horovitz liegt in ihrem Bett und blickt mit schwindendem Bewusstsein auf ihr Leben zurück. Sie denkt an ihre Kindheit im Kibbuz, an ihre Ehe und ihre zwei Kinder, von denen sie eines zu sehr und das andere zu wenig liebte. Ihr geliebter Sohn Avner ist zu einem Mann herangewachsen, dessen Erfolg als Anwalt ihn nicht von seiner tiefen Verbitterung erlösen kann. Er verfällt einer geheimnisvollen Frau, die seine Liebe nicht erwidert. Chemdas Tochter schenkt alle Liebe und Aufmerksamkeit ihrer Tochter. Als diese sich immer weiter von ihr entfernt, entsteht in ihr das mächtige Verlangen, ein Kind zu adoptieren und noch einmal von vorne zu beginnen. Doch der Widerstand ihrer Familie treibt sie in eine Sackgasse. Sie kann den Traum nicht überwinden, der das zu sprengen droht, was er eigentlich retten soll: ihre Familie. In Für den Rest des Lebens erzählt Zeruya Shalev von den elementaren Kräften zwischen Eltern und Kindern, von Wut, Enttäuschung und Sehnsucht, von Verletzungen und Liebe und davon, wie sich die Familienbande als stärker und beständiger erweisen als alles Sehnen und Streben, diese zu zerschneiden, und stärker als alle Kräfte, die uns trennen.

Zeruya Shalev

About

Books

Join the club