Nava Semel (1954–2017)

Trigger warning: this review refers to sexual violence during the Holocaust.
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Although Michael Orthofer's Complete Review Guide to Contemporary World Fiction doesn't include a reference to Israeli author rel="nofollow" target="_top">Nava Semel (1954-2017), the introduction to Israeli literature in translation has a useful summary that's relevant to a review of Semel's 2001 ground-breaking And the Rat Laughed.

While the nation has enjoyed relatively rapid economic growth and success, the horror of the Holocaust still weighs heavily here, as do concerns about national identity, geographic isolation, and threats from hostile regional regimes. The unresolved Palestinian situation, especially, has an uncertainty that pervades both daily life and the local literature. (The Complete Review Guide to Contemporary World Literature, by M A Orthofer, Columbia University Press, 2016, ISBN 9780231146753, p.271-2)

Hebrew, he says, only became a medium for fiction in the 20th century, so this literature even with its frequent biblical references and echoes, often feels very young. Waves of immigration make it susceptible to more and quicker change than elsewhere over the decades.

As you can see from the book description at Goodreads, And the Rat Laughed is an example of this innovation. It uses modernist techniques including pastiche to explore the act of remembrance...

The representation of the grandmother's efforts to tell her story is very moving. Her granddaughter has been given a project to interview a Holocaust survivor, and despite her teacher's insistence that she ask her questions sensitively, she badgers her grandmother into telling a story that she's been suppressing for decades. As a five year old child, along with the horror of being hidden — hungry, afraid and neglected by farmers who betrayed their promise to her parents that they would care for her — she was raped by the farmer's son throughout her captivity. She has never spoken of this to anyone, and she cannot bring herself to speak of it now.

This first part of the text, written from the grandmother's point-of-view, reveals her painful, jangled thoughts along with the fractured scraps that she conveys to her granddaughter, which — as we see in part 2 — are misinterpreted. The granddaughter grasps the fact that the parents found people that enabled their child to survive, and — resentful that she's might fail her project because her grandmother was so incoherent — she thinks that her grandmother should be grateful to the farmers, she should remember their names so that they can be counted among the Righteous Among Nations.

One name at least. That's all I wanted. Damn you, memory. Just give me a name! I was absolutely begging for it in my heart.

And suddenly I had an awful thought, the worst. Maybe she can't even remember her own name, the one her parents gave her. I'd rather not think about what if the name I know her by isn't even — (p.80)

She is shocked when it dawns on her that her grandmother doesn't even know when her birthday is.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/08/14/and-the-rat-laughed-2001-by-nava-semel-trans...… (plus d'informations)

Gershona is a 12 year old girl living in 10 year old Israel in 1958. The horrors of the Holocaust and World War II are not the focus of the book, but only mentioned in passing a few times.

Gershona hates her name - a boy's name (Gershon) with an a tacked onto the end to make is sound feminine. Kids make fun of her for it. But as the story begins, two new people move into her neighborhood and her life. One is her Grandfather, who is blind, and has been living in the United States for the last 30 years - he never even knew his son, Gershona's father. The other is Nimrod, a boy who moves into a neighboring building, and doesn't make fun of Gershona at all - but seems to like her.

Some of the story is educational, in that it takes place in a culture a little different than that of the modern U.S., or indeed the U.S. at any time. But the main elements of young love, and finding a kindred spirit in a aging grandparent are universal themes that would ring true for readers from any culture.

As in life, some of the questions that the book brings up are never answered. And in the case of Becoming Gershona, that is as it should be.… (plus d'informations)