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Thursday, Feb 07, 2008
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Bridging gaps with emotions

Zeruya Shalev

Israeli writer Zeruya Shalev is known for her novels and poetry. But the only book she has written for children, ‘Mama’s Best Boy,’ sounds the most interesting; given the political background she comes from.

The book is about a doting mother and her love for her son. “We spoil our children in Israel,” Shalev says as an introductory note. This mother tells her son that he is the best boy around. And when he reaches the kindergarten, he finds children who are stronger, taller and brighter – leaving him confused about what his mother had told him.

Finally, he learns that it is only his mother’s love that exaggerated his qualities. “He learns that you need not be the best to be loved.” Was there a political message in that story for children? “In a deductive way, yes.”

As a writer, Ms. Shalev prefers not to deal with politics in a direct manner. Her stories are about personal relations. She is more interested in “portraying the impact of politics in daily life, not in a direct way, but from the perspective of emotions.”

She looks for tragedies that families handle in their daily lives, and not great tragedies that haunt Israel and Palestine.

And this gave her works – be it ‘Love Life’ or ‘Husband and Wife’ – a universal appeal. Ms. Shalev believes every woman can associate with her characters because she filters realities in her life from entering into her works.

This was evident when she refused to carry the trauma of the Jerusalem Bus 19 massacre in her work. She was returning after taking her son to the kindergarten on January 29, 2004, when a suicide bomber blew up bus number 19 on Arlozorov Street in Jerusalem, killing 11 civilians and leaving over 50 people wounded. Ms. Shalev was one of the injured.

“It took more than half-a-year of operations before I could walk again. I was in the middle of a novel, which I stopped then. I did not allow the trauma to affect the work.”

But even she cannot escape from the realities, or their impact. She admits it. “There is no family in Israel that has not felt the pain of losing someone, either in the Holocaust, or the wars.” But her experience is that a majority in both nations want peace. “It is now a question of trust and fear and not a question of territory.”

She is presently working on a new novel. “It is also about family, but in a wider perspective.”

Ms. Shalev’s works have been translated into 21 languages. She has been awarded the Book Publishers’ Association’s Gold and Platinum Prizes, the German Corine Book Award (2001), the French Amphi Award, and the ACUM Prize three times (1997, 2003, 2005). ‘Husband and Wife’ was also nominated for the French Femina Prize (2002).

Ms. Shalev was in the city to attend the ongoing 4th D.C. International Book Fair and Cultural Fest.

Anand Haridas

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