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The protagonist has Egyptian roots going back many generations: on her father¿s side, to the expulsion of the Jews of Spain in 1492, when seven brothers of the Kastil family (from Castilla) landed on the Gaza coast after many trials and tribulations. Her mother¿s side goes back even further, to the only family that Jewish history has ignored: the ones who said ¿Nö to Moses and stayed in Egypt. After migrating to Israel in the 1950s and settling on a kibbutz¿from which they were soon expelled for Stalinism¿this storied clan moved to Tel Aviv. In this unconventional family saga, Orly Castel-Bloom blends fact with fiction, history with legend, reimagining the lives of her forebears in unforgettable prose.
About the author
Orly Castel-Bloom is a leading voice in Hebrew literature today. Her postmodern classic Dolly City has been included in UNESCO’s Collection of Representative Works, and was nominated in 2007 as one of the ten most important books since the creation of the state of Israel. An Egyptian Novel won the Sapir Prize in 2015.Todd Hasak-Lowy is a translator and fiction writer. He is the author of, among other works, a short story collection entitled The Task of This Translator and the novel Captives. He lives in Evanston, IL, and teaches creative writing and literature at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Summary
Mixing historical and biographical facts, made-up legends plus other fictions and exaggerations, Castel-Bloom has written an unconventional saga of her family, the Kastils: family meals and get-togethers, deaths and funerals, sayings and stories, and all those things that are not to be mentioned.
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"Castel-Bloom is one of Israel’s most original and outrageous writers. She pushes her themes to the limits, often to the cutting edge of madness."
