About this item
A young Yemeni Israeli woman learns of her mother's secret romance in a dramatic journey through lost family stories, revealing the unbreakable bond between a mother and a daughter - the debut novel of an award-winning literary voice.. 1950. Thousands of Yemeni Jews have immigrated to the newly founded Israel in search of a better life. In an overcrowded immigrant camp in Rosh Ha'ayin, Yaqub, a shy young man, happens upon Saida, a beautiful girl singing by the river. In the midst of chaos and uncertainty, they fall in love. But they weren't supposed to; Saida is married and has a child, and a married woman has no place befriending another man.. 1995. Thirty-something Zohara, Saida's daughter, has been living in New York City - a city that feels much less complicated than Israel, where she grew up wishing that her skin was lighter, that her illiterate mother's Yemeni music was quieter, and that the father who always favored her was alive.
About the Author
AYELET TSABARI was born in Israel to a large family of Yemeni descent. Her first book, The Best Place on Earth won the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature and the Edward Lewis Wallant Award and was long listed to the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. The book was a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice, a Kirkus Review best book of 2016, and has been published internationally. Excerpts from her memoir, The Art of Leaving, have won a National Magazine Award and a Western Magazine Award in Canada, and The New Quarterly 's Edna Staebler award. In 2014, she was awarded a Chalmers Arts Fellowship. She is a graduate of the Creative Writing MFA Program at Guelph and teaches at the University of King's College's MFA in Creative Nonfiction, and at the University of Toronto's School of Continuing Studies.
