Nava Semel (1954–2017)
Forfatter af And The Rat Laughed
Om forfatteren
Nava Semel was an acclaimed Israeli author who published more than twenty works of fiction, poetry, and memoir. She was the winner of the American National Jewish Book Award for Literature (1990), the Women Writers of the Mediterranean Award (1994), the Prime Minister's Prize (1996), and Tel Aviv's vis mere Literary Woman of the Year (2007). Her books were translated into many languages and published in Germany, France, Italy, China, Poland, and the US. vis mindre
Værker af Nava Semel
Face it: Essays von Thomas Edlinger, Stella Rollig und Nava Semel (2006) — Forfatter — 10 eksemplarer
Das Kind hinter den Augen. Hörspiel 1 eksemplar
Gläserne Facetten 1 eksemplar
Associated Works
Satte nøgleord på
Almen Viden
- Fødselsdato
- 1954
- Dødsdag
- 2017-12-02
- Køn
- female
- Nationalitet
- Israel
- Fødested
- Tel Aviv, Israel
Medlemmer
Anmeldelser
Lister
Hæderspriser
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Associated Authors
Statistikker
- Værker
- 16
- Also by
- 2
- Medlemmer
- 221
- Popularitet
- #101,335
- Vurdering
- 3.5
- Anmeldelser
- 3
- ISBN
- 34
- Sprog
- 5
If anything in this review raises issues for you, help is available at Beyond Blue.
Although Michael Orthofer's Complete Review Guide to Contemporary World Fiction doesn't include a reference to Israeli author rel="nofollow" target="_top">Nava Semel (1954-2017), the introduction to Israeli literature in translation has a useful summary that's relevant to a review of Semel's 2001 ground-breaking And the Rat Laughed.
Hebrew, he says, only became a medium for fiction in the 20th century, so this literature even with its frequent biblical references and echoes, often feels very young. Waves of immigration make it susceptible to more and quicker change than elsewhere over the decades.
As you can see from the book description at Goodreads, And the Rat Laughed is an example of this innovation. It uses modernist techniques including pastiche to explore the act of remembrance...
The representation of the grandmother's efforts to tell her story is very moving. Her granddaughter has been given a project to interview a Holocaust survivor, and despite her teacher's insistence that she ask her questions sensitively, she badgers her grandmother into telling a story that she's been suppressing for decades. As a five year old child, along with the horror of being hidden — hungry, afraid and neglected by farmers who betrayed their promise to her parents that they would care for her — she was raped by the farmer's son throughout her captivity. She has never spoken of this to anyone, and she cannot bring herself to speak of it now.
This first part of the text, written from the grandmother's point-of-view, reveals her painful, jangled thoughts along with the fractured scraps that she conveys to her granddaughter, which — as we see in part 2 — are misinterpreted. The granddaughter grasps the fact that the parents found people that enabled their child to survive, and — resentful that she's might fail her project because her grandmother was so incoherent — she thinks that her grandmother should be grateful to the farmers, she should remember their names so that they can be counted among the Righteous Among Nations.
She is shocked when it dawns on her that her grandmother doesn't even know when her birthday is.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/08/14/and-the-rat-laughed-2001-by-nava-semel-trans...… (mere)