Posted by Naomi Firestone-Teeter
Congrats are in order for 2007 Sami Rohr Prize Choice Award recipient Michael Lavigne (Not Me), who has a new book coming out! The book was acquired by Deborah Garrison and will be published by Schocken Books. A short description (with the book’s working title, Korban–we’ll update you when we have the final title and publication date!) can be found below. It’s nice having things like this to look forward to…
Set against the backdrop of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, KORBAN is the story of a father and daughter torn apart by ideology and sectarian violence as well as the terrible secrets of family history. The father, a Soviet immigrant in Israel, is injured in a suicide bombing — this event shatters not only his body, but his soul, and he is compelled to relive and come to terms with his past in Moscow, as well as try to heal his daughter who has been damaged by that secret past — and, at the same time it is his desperate search to find some shred of common ground with, and empathy for, the young man who blew himself up.
Told in three voices, one of which is an irrepressible thirteen year old and another a disembodied shahid, it’s a tale replete with talking animals, fairy tales, roaming spirits, visionary revelation and a meditation on the yearning for home and the power of love to destroy — and to heal.