Writing for the world
ISRAELI author Zeruya Shalev is enjoying international success with her novels, including her latest work, The Remains of Love.
On her first visit to Australia for the Sydney Writers Festival and the inaugural Melbourne Jewish Writers Festival (May 31-June 2), she has time to reflect that her books have been translated into 25 languages, including Croatian, Turkish, Vietnamese and Russian.
“It is a wonderful feeling to have readers all over the world,” says Shalev, who is travelling with her husband, writer Eyal Megged, and their seven-year-old son Jordan.
Shalev was born at Kibbutz Kinneret and has lived in Jerusalem for more than 30 years. For many years she worked as a book editor with Keter publishing house, but now concentrates on writing and promoting her own books.
“I’m very privileged to be in this situation after many years of hard work where I was editing other people’s books instead of writing my books,” she tells The AJN.
“When I was editing I became so involved with other writers’ books and didn’t have enough creativity for my own books.
“Only after Love Life (her first novel) became a big success in Israel and other countries, especially Germany, could I allow myself to pay more attention to my writing.
“Writing and travelling is a contradiction for me. When I write I sit in my dark cellar at home in Jerusalem and don’t see anyone as I’m concentrating on my imaginary world.
“When I’m travelling I enjoy meeting lots of people and visiting places, but now my book is calling me back!”
She is working on her next book – she admits that it takes at least a year between books – which will be out in 2015. Shalev’s three previous novels, Love Life, Husband and Wife and Thera have won many awards including the Corine International Book Prize (Germany, 2001), the Amphi Award (France, 2003), the French Wizo Prize (2007) and the Welt-Literature Award (2012).
The first book that Shalev had published was a collection of poetry, An Easy Target for Snipers, in 1988.
“I started writing poetry when I was very young,” she says. In fact, when she was six and living on a kibbutz, she wrote sad poems about cats and dogs that had been killed during wartime.
During the Six-Day War she wrote poetry to pass the time while sheltering in a kibbutz bunker.
“When I started writing novels I tried to keep my poetry in my prose. My style is quite poetic and I pay a lot of attention to the rhythm, metaphors and music of the language,” she explains.
“In a novel there is always a plot, always characters that are going through emotional dramas, but I try to describe it in a more poetic and more musical way.”
Shalev has also written a couple of children’s books, Mama’s Best Boy in 2001 and this week her new book Just Look at That Child is being released in Israel.
“Children’s books are a nice extra, but my main interest is my novels for adults,” she says.
“I have experienced the whole circle of Israeli life, from serving in the army to being injured by a terrorist bomb, so you can feel the intensity of Israeli life in my books, but it is not a central feature. The plot is universal and could be set anywhere.”
The Remains of Love is set around Hemda Horowitz, nearing the end of her days, who reflects upon her traumatic childhood on the kibbutz and the lives of her children, daughter Dina – the child she did not love enough – and son Avner, a human rights lawyer who was her favoured child.
The inspiration for the book came partly when Shalev was caring for her elderly mother.
“I became interested in what older people were thinking about.”
The novel tackles issues such as the prospect of death as well as romance and relationships.
“I know it is a bit sad, but I feel it is my most optimistic novel, even my most romantic novel,” she says.
“I write about the personalities of three different characters – it was like writing three different books because each had his or her own story.”
Shalev says that being an Israeli writer is not easy.
“You have to write from a feeling of inner freedom and when I’m abroad I’m often asked why I don’t write about Israeli politics,” she says.
“And I have to explain that politics in Israel can dominate my life, but I don’t want to let it dominate my writing. I leave politics for the newspapers. I don’t want to make my writing dirty.”
Zeruya Shalev’s The Remains of Love is published by Bloomsbury.
REPORT by Danny Gocs
PHOTO of Zeruya Shalev (second from left) and fellow authors (from left) Maria Tumarkin,, Dara Horn and Arnold Zable at the gala opening of the Melbourne Jewish Writers’ Festival on May 31. Photo: Lochlan Tangas
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