Short stories
בכפיפה אחת
Not translated into English
Amalia Kahana-Carmon · 1966
Synopsis
Short, lyrical stories in which almost nothing happens, and where everything turns on a moment of dazzlement that life will not prolong. In the best known, Naima Sasson, a schoolgirl from a religious family in Jerusalem, a pupil at the Ohel Sarah girls' school, falls in love with her teacher, Yehezkel; she writes poems, sees one published in the school newspaper and waits to learn what he thinks of it. Another story returns to the fighters in the Negev during the 1948 war. The sentence is long, the syntax disorienting, and one follows a perception rather than an action.
Context
She had published her first story in 1956, but readers discovered her only with this collection, which appeared in 1966 from Sifriyat Poalim. In the Israel of the fifties, writes the critic Lily Ratok, editors did not rush to her door, and her writing aroused strong resistance. The book was an immediate success; Naïma Sasson's story has become a reference coming-of-age story for Israeli women writers and artists. Her lyrical prose, her syntax and her rare words kept her apart from the two generations between which she was placed, that of the Palmach and that of the State.
Who it is for
A collection of stories, with no French edition. It helps to accept that the essential lies in a very brief moment, perceived by a single character.
Prizes and reception
An immediate success; counted in 2007 among the most important books in the history of Israel.
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