Marcela examine “Aviva-No,” Shimon Adaf’s wrenching and linguistically innovative elegy to his sister, who died at the age of 43. It won the 2010 Yehuda Amichai Prize.

Originally published in Arabic, “Minor Detail” centers around a brutal crime — the 1949 rape and murder of a young Bedouin girl, in the Negev, during the Israeli War of Independence. Decades later, a young woman in Ramallah becomes obsessed with the events surrounding the crime and begins to dig for details.

Marcela reads from Yair Assulin’s searing novel that tells the journey of a young Israeli soldier at the breaking point, unable to continue carrying out his military service, yet terrified of the consequences of leaving the army.

To acknowledge those who are fasting in isolation and heat, this episode features Mahmoud Darwish’s aptly titled collection, “In the Presence of Absence.”

The bible devotes quite a bit of space to the minds of the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — we know how they feel, what makes them angry or happy. Through her poetry, Karen Alkaly-Gut gives the matriarchs a voice.

On this episode, Marcela reads from Sayed Kashua’s fourth, and latest novel, Track Changes. The novel was published in December by Grove Press.

Kashua’s protagonist is a nameless “I” who shares considerable biographical overlaps with the author. His confessions are hardly reliable, making every level of his storytelling suspect, which Kashua further visually underscores by “track changes”-style crossed-out text.

Marcela reads from Anat Zecharia’s poem, “One, Two, Three.” The poem’s title and subtitle refer to Uzi Hitman’s children song about three dwarfs who sit chatting behind a mountain.

Marcela highlights poetry from the latest issue of The Ilanot Review which published English translations of up and coming poets and writers, most of whom are featured for the very first time.

“Isra Ilse” opens when Liam Emanuel, a descendant of Noah, inherits Grand Island. He leaves Israel to reclaim this “Promised Land” but disappears soon after arriving in the US. Simon Lenox, an investigator, tries to recover Israel’s “missing son”

This week Marcela returns to focus on up and coming Israeli writers who have rarely or never before been translated into English, by featuring Ayala Ben Lulu. “Mona Lisa” appears in the latest issue of The Ilanot Review, which was a collaboration with Granta Hebrew.

This podcast is dedicated to marriage—all the engaged couples with cold feet, newly married couples, and long-married couples who survived the wedding day. Marcela reads from and discusses the last book Ronit Matalon wrote before her death in 2017, which was awarded Israel’s prestigious Brenner Prize.

The novel, “The First Mrs. Rothschild,” by Sara Aharoni, tells the story of the wife of Meir Amschel Rothschild, the founder of the banking dynasty, and is written in the form of a personal journal.

Host Marcela Sulak reads from a folkloric-infused story by the Jerusalem-born writer Dan Banaya-Seri, in which a simple Jewish man uses his minimal understanding of Christmas to try to make sense of his marital obligations.

Today we read from the story “The Shop on Main Street,” written by Ladislav Grosman, a Slovak novelist and screenwriter. It is both comical and tragic, and it asks the question—are we not our brother’s keeper? Who is our brother, anyway?

Set in contemporary Tel Aviv 48 hours after Israelis discover all their Palestinian neighbors have vanished, the novel unfolds through alternating narrators, Alaa, a young Palestinian man who converses with his dead grandmother in the journal he left behind when he disappeared, and his Jewish neighbor, Ariel, a journalist struggling to understand the traumatic event.

What if, when you were in Kindergarten, your mother had given you a magic wand that allowed you to read people’s minds? Well, that’s just what happens in Orit Gidali’s book, “Nora the Mind Reader,” which will bring to a close our month of illustrated children’s books written by Israeli poets and writers.

No Israeli childhood experience would be complete without Leah Goldberg. Her story “Room for Rent” was published in 1948 and is one of the most classic children’s books available in Hebrew.

This month we continue our spotlight on beautifully written and illustrated Israeli children’s books translated into English with “The Heart Shaped Leaf,” by Shira Geffen and illustrated by David Polonsky.

Some of Marcela's favorite children’s books have been written by well known poets and illustrated by some of Israel’s most talented artists. This episode features “The Mermaid in the Bathtub,” written by Nurit Zarchi and illustrated by Rutu Modan.

For the next few weeks, we will feature new, up-and-coming writers whose work have recently been translated to English. Nano Shabtai is known in Hebrew arts and letters as a poet, dramatist and director.

Ronny Someck's poems in “The Milk Underground” deals with being a father of girls—adolescent and teenaged, young women. They explore the fraught territory of daughter’s bodies—body as dowry, body as a locus for pleasure and for betrayal, and the poems extend a fatherly embrace to the girls after their pained mother has broken off relations.

Ayelet Tsabari, born in Israel to a large family of Yemeni descent, grew up in a suburb of Tel Aviv, served in the Israeli army, and travelled extensively. As an Israeli writer, Ayelet is unusual in that she usually writes in English, not Hebrew, though the essay we are featuring today was originally written in Hebrew.

We’re currently in the days of Sukkot, in which Jews everywhere dwell in a temporary structure called a Sukkah. One of the customs of Sukkot is inviting guests for meals in the Sukkah, close friends or needy strangers.

"I hereby close the gates between my legs till further notice / For an unlimited period, due to maintenance. / No bearers of first fruit will come / No pilgrims will make pilgrimage..."