The Women My Father Knew
Savyon Liebrecht
Translated from Hebrew by Sondra Silverston

A literary mystery, set in New York City and bohemian Tel Aviv, by one of Israel’s most admired popular authors.

After his successful first novel, Meir suffers writer’s block. Then his father, poet and charmer of women, who supposedly died decades earlier, contacts him and they arrange to meet. Fragmented, troubling memories of a forgotten childhood time spent alone with his father rise to Meir’s consciousness. Swirling floodwater, a man hiding from the Gestapo, a woman flirting, a bloodstained sheet. What happened during that time, and why did his father disappear?
While solving these riddles of the past, Meir inhabits the borderland between memory and artistic creation. There he finds emotions so deeply tangled in his being that they can only be expressed through art. He begins to write again—a story of a loving son who witnessed a seduction and perhaps also a murder.

“… totally enthralling, The Women My Father Knew is a must-read… mysterious, tremendously thought-provoking… a quick read with enough suspense that you won’t want to put it down.”
—Maayan Jaffe, Baltimore Jewish Times

“One of the most important writers of our generation.… [In The Women My Father Knew] Liebrecht legitimizes the return to ourselves, to our personal biography.”
—MAARIV (Tel Aviv)

“Liebrecht knows how to delve into the archaeological layers of her characters… She empathizes with them and she loves them—and love is contagious.”
—Modern Hebrew Literature

Savyon Liebrecht was born in Germany to Holocaust survivors, and immigrated to Israel as a yong child. An award-winning playwright and author, her published books include the story collections Apples from the Desert and A Good Place for the Night, and the novel, A Man and a Woman and a Man. She lives in Tel Aviv. 

Paperback / $16.95 (Can $18.50) / ISBN 978-0-89255-356-3 / 214 pages / Fiction