Many Voices in the Prose
of Shulamith Hareven by Yael Balaban is the
first book-size monograph dedicated to Hareven’s oeuvre. It offers for the
first time a deep understanding of Hareven’s fiction, including her early short
stories, City of Many Days, and Thirst – the Desert Trilogy.
Hareven’s unique voice has been missed by contemporary critics, as both her
ideas and her poetics were ahead of her time: She wrote about sexual abuse long
before the subject ever entered public discourse; wrote about the “second
generation” of Holocaust survivors before the term was established; and created
Mizrahi and Arab characters very different from the stereotypic characters in
contemporary Hebrew literature. It is time to re-read Shulamith Hareven’s work
and discover beautiful stories suffused with moral and social sensitivity and a
profound commitment to language and literature.
