Critics' Opinion:
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Published Mar 2024
320 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Paperback Original.
Publication Information
Three Israeli women, their lives altered by immigration to the United States, seek to overcome crises. Ilana is a veteran Hebrew instructor at a Midwestern college who has built her life around her career.
When a young Hebrew literature professor joins the faculty, she finds his post-Zionist politics pose a threat to her life's work. Miriam, whose son left Israel to make his fortune in Silicon Valley, pays an unwanted visit to meet her new grandson and discovers cracks in the family's perfect façade. Efrat, another Israeli in California, is determined to help her daughter navigate the challenges of middle school, and crosses forbidden lines when she follows her into the minefield of social media. In these three stirring novellas-comedies of manners with an ambitious blend of irony and sensitivity-celebrated Israeli author Maya Arad probes the demise of idealism and the generation gap that her heroines must confront.
"Meticulously observed, with remarkable shades of subtlety and nuance. What could have easily become a political screed is, instead, a gentle inquiry into aging, what it means to be relevant, academic ambition, and, most particularly, the morality of Zionist politics ... The quiet subtlety of Arad's prose only pulls the strength of her insights into higher relief." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Arad makes her English-language debut with an intelligent triptych of novellas that showcase Israeli women navigating their professional and family relationships in the U.S...Throughout, Arad offers an astute and heartfelt look at what brings people together and what drives them apart. Readers will be rewarded by Arad's keen insights."
—Publishers Weekly
"Cultures and generations clash in Maya Arad's insightful novella collection The Hebrew Teacher, which follows three storylines whose flows are sometimes concentric ... With clarity and insight, The Hebrew Teacher dissects divides among Israeli immigrants in California." — Foreword Reviews
"Sharp, intelligent, full of insights—Maya Arad's writing penetrates the heart and excites the mind." —Ayelet Gundar-Goshen, author of Waking Lions
"An intensely readable and beautifully observed novel of manners, full of wisdom, generosity, humor, and sharp insights into academic and expatriate life." —Elif Batuman, author of Either/Or and The Idiot
"A brave, nuanced, and compassionate exploration of the tragedy of immigration and relocation from one of the leading voices of contemporary Hebrew literature." —Ruby Namdar, author of The Ruined House
This information about The Hebrew Teacher was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Maya Arad is the author of eleven books of Hebrew fiction, as well as studies in literary criticism and linguistics. Born in Israel in 1971, she received a PhD in linguistics from University College London and for the past twenty years has lived in California where she is currently writer in residence at Stanford University's Taube Center for Jewish Studies.
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