Price  £7.99
Format  Paperback
Published  March 2004
Length  240 pages
ISBN  9781870015837
ISBN  9781905559602 (ebook)

Ashes and Other Stories
Naomi Shepherd                                         

Naomi Shepherd is a prize-winning historian and biographer; here she turns her hand to fiction, revealing a razor-sharp eye, a finely attuned ear, and a keen sense of cultural dissonance. In each of these thirteen stories we see a different facet of a fast-changing country where the clash of cultures and of expectations creates situations rich in humour, poignancy, disappointment, and tragedy.

‘The short stories in Naomi Shepherd’s collection Ashes are a delight. In them we encounter themes of adultery, love, jealousy, loss, guilt, encroaching age, et cetera, set in an Israel of many modes, and Israel shaped by its heritage, its history, and, above all, its inhabitants, Jew and Arab, all gathered together not so much in a melting pot as in a stew concocted of intractable, discordant elements. We are presented, in short, with an anatomy of Israeli society, a species of social tragic-comedy.’

     Alan Isler, author of The Prince of West End Avenue

‘the book’s lightness of tone belies a much darker vision'

     Times Literary Supplement

‘engaging, thoughtful stories’

     The Jewish Quarterly

About Naomi Shepherd

Naomi Shepherd was born and educated in Britain but has lived most of her adult life in Israel. She is also a prize-wining historian, biographer, journalist and documentary maker.