Living in Tel-Aviv in 1958, twelve-year-old Gershona experiences first love, learns a family secret, and crosses the line between childhood and adulthood

Becoming Gershona (A Puffin Book)

Teen & Young Adult

Semel, Nava

Literature & Fiction

Puffin

Gershona, a twelve-year-old girl living in post-World War II Israel, experiences a new beginning in life when her grandfather arrives from the United States and a new boy in her neighborhood befriends her

Becoming Gershona

Children's Books

Viking Juvenile

Flying Lessons

Living in a village in Israel where her father grows oranges, a motherless girl befriends a sensitive shoemaker from Djerba from whom she hopes to learn how to fly

Halkin, Hillel

Simon&Schuster

Diane Pub Co.

On the last day of 1999, a survivor grandmother in Tel Aviv shares with her granddaughter her tragic life story as a child hidden in a pit, with only a rat for company. The granddaughter tells the legend of ''Girl and Rat'' to her teacher; in 2009 those who heard it through her classmates establish an internet website with poems. From now on this memory is spread all over the world and becomes a myth. A future anthropologist, researching its mysterious roots in 2099, discovers Father Stanislaw's personal journal documenting his rescue of that little Jewish girl, and so the chain of remembearers moves from the present to the future and back to the past.

And The Rat Laughed

Contemporary

ReadHowYouWant

And the Rat Laughed is a unique book. Unlike other Holocaust-related books that focus on the historical horrific events, this novel deals with the act of remembering them. It resembles a relay race in which the characters transfer memory from one another, while travelling on the axis of time. The book begins in the last day of 1999, when a survivor Grandmother in Tel Aviv shares her tragic life story as a hidden child in a pit, with only a rat for company with her granddaughter. The day after – 2000 already – the granddaughter tells the legend of "Girl and Rat" to her teacher and in 2009 those who heard it through her classmates establish an internet website with poems. From now on this memory is spread all over the world and becomes a myth. In 2099 a future anthropologist discovers it and tries to uncover its mysterious roots. In her research, she reveals the first man who created this myth in the past. Father Stanislaw, a Catholic priest, saved that little Jewish girl (who later became the Grandmother in Tel Aviv) and returned her after the war to her Jewish people. In his personal journal he documented everything, to make sure the world will never forget. The chain of remembearers, therefore, moves from the present to the future and back to the past. The novel is written in 5 genres: story, legend, poems, science fiction and diary, creating a cycle of 150 years. And the Rat Laughed got acclaim for its use of unconventional and original literary devices and became a ground breaker for exploring the act of memory itself. How do we tell our painful story? Does it change while we recall it? How will our next recipient recall it in his own individual way? Is Art the only corridor to transfer emotional memory?

And the Rat Laughed

Hybrid Publishers

Seen through the eyes of an illiterate twelve-year-old boy, Nava Semel's moving, at times lyrical fiction explores life in the Palestine of the 1930s - a world where a young Jew is prepared to undertake multiple marriages to threatened East European women for patriotic reasons alone; where a boy's closest friends are a dog named after his hero Johnny Weissmuller (the screen Tarzan of blessed memory), his brother's first wife, and the girl next door. Semel weaves a rich evocation of love and pain and promises, written with eloquent humanity and verve

Paper Bride

Genre Fiction

This novel is inspired by a true historical event. Before Theodore Herzl there was Mordecai Manuel Noah, an American journalist, diplomat, playwright, and visionary. In September 1825 he bought Grand Island, downriver from Niagara Falls, from the local Native Americans as a place of refuge for the Jewish people and called it Ararat.” But no Jews came. What if they had followed Noah’s call? In Nava Semel’s alternate history Jews from throughout the world flee persecution and come to Ararat. Isra Isle becomes the smallest state in the US. Israel does not exist, and there was no Holocaust. In exploring this what-if scenario, Semel stimulates new thinking about memory, Jewish/Israeli identity, attitudes toward minorities, women in top political positions, and the place of cultural heritage. The novel is divided into three parts. Part 1, a detective story, opens in September 2001 when Liam Emanuel, an Israeli descendant of Noah, learns about and inherits this island. He leaves Israel intending to reclaim this Promised Land” in America. Shortly after he arrives in America Liam disappears. Simon T. Lenox, a Native American police investigator, tries to recover Israel’s missing son.” Part 2 flashes back to the time and events surrounding Mordecai Noah’s purchase of the island from the local Native Americans. Part 3 poses an alternate history: the rise of a successful modern Jewish city-state, Isra Isle, on the northern New York and Canadian bordera metropolis that looks remarkably like New York City both before and after 9/11in which the Jewish female governor campaigns to become president of the United States. Nava Semel has published novels, short stories, poetry, plays, children's books, and a number of TV scripts. Her books have been translated and published in many countries. Her book, Becoming Gershona, received the 1990 National Jewish Book Award in the US.

Isra-Isle: A Novel

Mandel Vilar Press

La historia de Hadara, una chica que quiere huir de la estrechez de su mundo.

Clases de vuelo (Spanish Edition)

Lóguez Ediciones

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Books by Semel, Nava

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Semel, Nava. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Becoming Gershona (A Puffin Book)

Becoming Gershona

Flying Lessons

Flying Lessons

And The Rat Laughed

And the Rat Laughed

Paper Bride

Isra-Isle: A Novel

Clases de vuelo (Spanish Edition)