Where I Am
"Serves up heaping portions of yearning, passion, alienation, and regret, and establishes Dana Shem-Ur as one of the rising stars of the new Israeli literature."—Joshua Cohen, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Netanyahus
A piercing novel about life abroad in a cultural setting not one’s own: Reut is an Israeli translator living in Paris with a French husband and their child. She’s made sacrifices for her family but now feels a simmering discontent and estrangement that erupts at a festive dinner party with affluent, intellectual friends. During the sumptuous meal, she navigates a tangle of cultural codes with which she’s never been fully at ease. This is a novel about big life choices that examines a woman’s attitudes toward belonging to a man, to a culture, to a language. Where I Am is an intimate, witty book portraying a profoundly human yearning to stop everything, to lay down one’s head, and to feel—if only for a moment—at home.
Dana Shem-Ur
lived in Paris for three years and obtained a master’s degree in philosophy from the École Normale Supérieure. She is a Ph.D. candidate in history at Tel Aviv University who translates from French, Italian, and Chinese into Hebrew.
Yardenne Greenspan has translated writing by Israeli authors including Shemi Zarhin, Yitzhak Gormezano-Goren, Rana Werbin, Yaakov Shabtai, and Gon Ben Ari.
