[.ca] Apples from the Desert: Selected Stories (ISBN 1558611908)

From Amazon.com:
"Months afterwards she would remember that morning with dismay, when she had sat with them for the first time, as though they were at home there: drinking from cups like welcome guests ... and only the part of her, the part that didn't laugh with them, thought: Could these hands, serving coffee, be the ones that planted the booby-trapped doll at the gate of the religious school at the end of the street?" In the stories of Israeli author Savyon Liebrecht, personal relationships can't help but become political. In "A Room on the Roof," an unnamed Jewish woman hires three Arab workers to build an addition onto her house while her husband is out of the country. So paralyzed is she by her fear of Arabs, she is unable to recognize the essential decency of these particular men; on the rare occasions when she is able to see past her own blind bigotry, the realization that her workmen are human beings with their own set of hopes, fears, and prejudices is so terrifying that she becomes even more strident in her intolerance. Though a few of the stories in Apples from the Desert are directly concerned with interactions between Jews and Arabs, the collection is, in fact, more about how Israelis deal with each other. The Holocaust is the unmentioned elephant in the drawing room, for Liebrecht, herself the daughter of concentration camp survivors, is particularly interested in the impact that tragedy has had on the children of survivors. In "Hayuta's Engagement Party," everyone fears that Grandpa, a Holocaust survivor, will ruin this festive occasion (as he has many others) with his grim recitals of death-camp atrocities. The protagonist of "'What Am I Speaking, Chinese?' She Said to Him" returns to her childhood home in Poland in order to stage a sexual encounter in the same room where her parents--again Holocaust survivors--once argued about sex. If the Holocaust is one theme running through most of these stories, the position of women in modern Israeli society is another. Many of the women--especially older ones--in Liebrecht's stories are in oppressive marriages with men who neglect, ridicule, and sometimes physically abuse them. In "Compassion," a Jewish woman who was hidden from the Nazis in a Catholic convent as a child marries an Arab man who eventually imprisons her and takes a younger wife. Victoria, the mother of a rebellious daughter in the collection's title story, only recognizes the depths of her own marital misery when she sees the loving relationship her child has formed outside the legal bonds of matrimony. There is nothing subtle about Liebrecht's stories, and readers accustomed to the finely tuned ironies of an Ann Beattie or Alice Munro may find these stories a trifle emphatic. However, anyone interested in the literature coming out of Israel today will find Savyon Liebrecht's window on the land and the people illuminating, if sometimes uncomfortable reading.

very deliberate allegories:
These stories are the equivalent of being hit on the head with a literary sledgehammer. The points that they make (the Arabs as The Other, the Holocaust as having an impact on modern Israeli society, etc.) are pretty obvious to anyone who has any knowledge of Israel or Jewish history. They occasionally read like writing class exercises, actually. That being said, the stories are a good window into Israeli society and show elements which you don't see on the news. For excellent Israeli literature, though, I'd have to recommend Yaakov Shabtai, Amos Oz or A.B. Yehoshua.

Lovely set of short stories:
This is a collection of 12 lovely short stories published in Israel between 1986 and 1992. Savyon Liebrecht is a child of survivors from the Holocaust and like many other children from parents who underwent the same experience, she had to deal with the trauma of the past which most often meant trying to understand and live with the "silence" from her forbears. Not only is this fact reflected in her stories, but she also addresses the problems in the interaction between Israelis and Arabs, as well as between Israelis themselves. Her stories reflect the influence of political and social conflicts in daily life and family structure. The author has a very honest approach to those conflicts, with a direct and simple style, most outstanding for its feministic and humane touch.

Great writing about the things that really matter:
Great, tight, vivid, exact writing about the Important Things (universal concerns, issues, and feelings) in the mood of a calm and astute observer/chronicler -- with soul. Perfect. Although these stories are primarily concerned with Israelis, I encouraged an East Indian friend to read "The Homesick Scientist"; it spoke to him so deeply of his own private experience that he immediately ordered the book (from Amazon, of course).

Feelings expressed so well in mere words!:
This is a wonderful book of short stories which contradicts the sterotypical picture of Israelis so often portrayed in the nightly news. It shows (mostly from the female point of view) the nuances of many types of Israelis, from religious to secular, from Ashkenazi to Sephardic, from Arab to Jew. In particular, it brings out the human side of each of its characters and demonstrates that feelings change from time to time and situation to situation. These are beautiful studies of human interaction. I have four favorite stories. In "A Room on the Roof", a woman's husband goes to Texas, and she decides to build a new room on the second story of her home while he's gone. Her Jewish contractor leaves her alone with three Arab laborers during the construction process. She is not sure to how to react to their presence near and in her home. "The Road to Cedar City" tells of an Israeli couple (Hassida and Yehiel) and their son Yuval who are traveling in the United States when their rented car breaks down. The wife is unhappy when she learns that she must share a ride in a minivan with another young Israeli couple and their baby who are from Jerusalem. A talkative minivan driver further complicates matters by running his mouth during the entire trip. "Mother's Photo Album" is about a Dr. Joshua Hoshen who looks into his mother's medical record after she is hospitalized in a mental institution. He pieces together her life from what he reads in her record and uses a photograph to help resolve his anguish about what he discovers. A most notable story is "The Homesick Scientist" in which eldery Zerubavel wlcomes his nephew, a well-known Israeli scientist who lives in the United States, as he returns to visit Israel after 21 years. His nephew had frequently spent summers with Zerubavel after Zerubavel's own son Uri had been killed while on reserve duty. Zerubavel, although he had eagerly anticipated his nephew's visit, isn't sure what his nephew's motives were for returning after such a long absence.