לליה

She was five when her family emigrated from the Soviet Union and landed in the tough Ashdod of the seventies. Her father is warm but, in her eyes, weak; her mother is hard and strong and allows herself to love neither her daughter nor her husband. The yellow-haired girl becomes a wild, restless teenager, torn between the wish to belong, to try things, to love and to dream, and the foreignness wrapped around all of it. At the centre is her teenage bond with Daniel, from an old Israeli family; together they try to overcome the despair and contempt each carries, yet keep sabotaging their own love. The novel covers roughly her first twenty years.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Length

214 pages in the original

Genres

Coming of age, Migration, Love (assigned by AI)

Set in

Israel, 1970s–1980s

First published

2000 by Hakibbutz Hameuchad

Author's age

33 when first published