In this anthology, Glazer, an American professor of literature with strong ties to Israel, guides the reader and introduces the female voices of contemporary Israeli literature.
"...writers probe the singular reality of Israel itself, the "story beind the story" of Israeli ideologies, Jewish religious beliefs, public political dramas, and collective traumas."

Review by Dr. Ruth Essex, author of the newly published Israeli Writing Against Itself: The Clash of Hellenism and Judaism in Modern Israeli Literature

The publication of Dreaming the Actual: Contemporary Fiction and Poetry by Israeli Women Writers selected, edited and introduced by Miriyam Glazer is a milestone in the developing field of the translation of Israeli literature -- in this instance the short stories and poetry of Isaeli women, writen in Hebrew, Russian and English. The works in this anthology cover the last decade of the 20th century, a volatile period that coincides and clashes with the upsurge in writing by Israeli women. The inception of composing and publicizing these texts looks forward to a more open future for voicing the feminine narrative too long neglected in Israeli literary circles.

The choice of these particular works -- a startling output -- cuts across the daily existence of Israeli women. The themes covered reveal a strong consciousness of a day-to-day engagement with the underlying currents that determine Israeli living. Bereavement, poverty, displacement, haunt the psyches of the inhabitants of a country built on the bitter message of the Holocaust and the struggle to survive. Having said this, the new generation of women writers reflected by the examples in this anthology moves away from this initial historical and collective plight to a contemporary one of a more personal nature that perhaps implies an equally unstable and insecure future. In these texts women attempt to refashion goals and themes from an individual perspective which departs from the group and focuses on the feminine self, a narrative too long neglected.

We can only be pleased that these works dealing with political situations, varieties of social protest, the outcast and many others proclaim the women's narrative -- prose and poetic -- as having matured into a large story, one that will no longer be marginalized by the powers that be in a predominatly patriarchal society. The small feminine narrative of previous decades is no longer viable and it will no longer be forced to lurk in the narrow byways as a subversive and unattractive voice.

The translations of these stories and poems elucidate not just the correctness of language and the accuracy of the words. Rather they penetrate the intention of the word and articulate a sensitivity to the character as to the event. The moment and the controlling personality speak directly to the reader clarifying in such a way that language barriers do not intrude upon the voice of the woman writer, her woman protagonist and the reading woman. Instead these good translations evoke a shared identity among all the participating parties. I do not doubt that this will be true for the English reader across the world and especially for the American woman with whose social awareness Professor Glazer is anxious to link these works and to project them as a shared experience, a bonding across historical, geographical and cultural frontiers.

Her selection of these prose and poetic narratives and their very insightful translations must be applauded. As indeed this entire project serves to foster an interest in Israeli women's literature, one that can only be gratifying to all participants.

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