New to Jerusalem and to adulthood, Rutha serves Café Shira’s devoted customers with a quiet compassion and a sensitive gaze, collecting their stories and absorbing them at her peril. Avigdor, the melancholy and somewhat weary café owner, philosophizes about love as he attends to the needs of his patrons while ignoring his own. Christian, a young religious pilgrim, has come to Jerusalem to find God but stumbles upon a much different revelation. These characters form the heart of this wry, o...

Hilarious and sad at the same time, Ehrlich’s collection of short stories, Who Will Die Last is an original and moving work of fiction. Ever deeply humane, the author takes his characters on a tantalizing journey through their souls. His understated style transforms even a heartbreaking plot into an uplifting and funny story. Israel’s special history, landscapes, and conflicts add to the drama and passion of the book. Ehrlich’s themes relate to gay life in Israel, the pull of lone...

Set in an upper-middle-class Tel Aviv apartment building, this best-selling and warmly acclaimed Israeli novel examines the interconnected lives of its residents, whose turmoils, secrets, unreliable confessions, and problematic decisions reveal a society in the midst of an identity crisis.On the first floor, Arnon, a tormented retired officer who fought in the First Intifada, confesses to an army friend with a troubled military past how his obsession about his youn...

The memoir of a woman leaving behind her faith and her marriage to navigate the terrifying, liberating terrain of a world unknown to her.A New York Times Editors' ChoiceA Best Book Pick by O, The Oprah Magazine; Jewish Week; Real Simple"An intimate tale of departure . . . [Mirvis] movingly conveys the heartache that accompanies the abandonment of one way of life in search of ...

Israeli crime fiction that "sets the bar high for subsequent Noir offerings. The genre is hot, Tel Aviv is exotic, and this volume is outstanding" ( Library Journal, starred review).Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, launched with the summer '04 award-winning bestseller Brooklyn Noir. Each book is comprised of all-new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the respec...

Essays by "Jerusalem's version of Charles Bukowski . . . Just as aware and critical—of his city, his family, Israel, the Arabs, but most of all of himself" (NPR).Sayed Kashua has been praised by the New York Times as "a master of subtle nuance in dealing with both Arab and Jewish society." An Arab-Israeli who lived in Jerusalem for most of his life, Kashua started writing with the hope of creating one story that both Palestinians and Israelis could relate t...

**Winner of the 2022 National Jewish Book Award for Hebrew Fiction in TranslationAn incendiary tale of sex work from a young literary provocateur**Love is a fever dream of a novel about a young sex worker whose life blurs the boundaries between violence and intimacy, objectification and real love. Startlingly vulnerable and lyrically deft, Maayan Eitan’s debut follows Libby as she goes about her work in a nameless Israeli city, riding in cars, seeing clients, meeti...

DESCRIPTIONIn Between Life and Death, famed Israeli writer Yoram Kaniuk (“one of the most innovative, brilliant novelists in the Western World” —New York Times) describes the four months during which he lay unconscious in a Tel Aviv hospital, hovering between the world of the living and that of the dead. With his unique blend of playfulness and fearlessness, Kaniuk attempts to penetrate his own lost consciousness and understand what led him to fight for his life w...

Sayed Kashua has been lauded by the New York Times as "a master of subtle nuance in dealing with both Arab and Jewish society." A Palestinian-Israeli who lived in Jerusalem for most of his life, Kashua started writing with the hope of creating one story that both sides could relate to. He devoted his novels and his satirical column in Haaretz to exploring the contradictions of modern Israel while also capturing the nuances of everyday family life in all its tenderness and chaos. Over the l...

WALL STREET JOURNAL AND USA TODAY BESTSELLER • From the star of the Netflix reality series My Unorthodox Life, a riveting, inspiring memoir of one woman’s escape from an extremist religious sect and an extraordinary rise from housewife to shoe designer, to CEO and co-owner of the modeling agency Elite World Group“An irresistible read . . . Written with great intensity and rare candor, Brazen is a story of...

WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE • From the bestselling author of To the End of the Land comes a searing story of loss and survival.In a dive bar in a small Israeli city, Dov Greenstein, a comedian a bit past his prime, takes the stage for his final show. Over the course of a single evening, Dov’s patter becomes a kind of memoir, taking us back into the terrors of his childhood. And in the dance between comic and audience, a de...

An Israeli couple's emotional struggle in the early days of the Yom Kippur WarAmalia and Daniel find their lives thrown into utter chaos when the Yom Kippur War breaks out in October 1973. Amalia volunteers in the burn ward of a military hospital, where she witnesses the carnage firsthand. A badly injured, unidentified solider captures her attention, and she fights to keep him alive as her husband, an undercover intelligence officer, pursues his own mission on the f...