The incident
Over the long days she spent behind the counter, Nofar had developed a habit – she looked into the customers’ faces and tried to guess which of them had come into the ice-cream parlour by accident and which were there by design. The accidental visitors were nicer: people strolling leisurely down the street, sailing along...
Ayelet Gundar-Goshen: The unseen
Ayelet Gundar-Goshen’s debut novel One Night, Markovitch, published last year, is a funny, sensual and unshakably poetic reimagining of a true-life story in which an unremarkable man agrees an arranged marriage to a beautiful woman, then reneges on his promise of a quick divorce. In her second, Waking Lions, the mood darkens as she examines...
Riding the dragon
How a routine ‘meet the parents’ made me write my first novel (and get mixed up with a whole village). “Who lives in that house?” I asked my boyfriend the first time he took me to his parents’ village. The house behind the fence wasn’t especially dark or remarkably mysterious. There was no ivy on...
Ayelet Gundar-Goshen untamed
Ayelet Gundar-Goshen’s debut novel One Night, Markovitch is a dazzlingly funny and tender story about love, betrayal and mythmaking. Set before, during and after the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, it centres around an unremarkable man who agrees to an arranged marriage to a beautiful woman to help her escape Nazi Europe for the emerging Jewish homeland...
The poet
Bella Markovitch spent an entire year in the home of the poet. Several days after their first meeting, she got used to the chopped liver smell, and now smelled it only when they fought. Every morning, after the poet left for work, Bella packed all her clothes in a bag and was ready to leave...
