Ayelet Gundar-Goshen: Waking Lions

On his way to Beersheba hospital on an abandoned road Dr. Eitan Green hits a pedestrian. He discovers to his horror that the man is an Eritrean immigrant with no chance of survival and flees the scene. His life is transformed the moment a young black woman, the dead man’s widow, arrives at his door and forces him to provide medical care to African migrants. Green’s fate is in the hands of a beautiful woman who both attracts and repels him. This gripping story about erotic attraction and alienation reveals the darkest corners of Israeli society and the human soul.

Since its publication the novel Waking Lions, with its theme of migration to Israel, has won renown around the world. The book and its subject matter will be debated by the Israeli writer Ayelet Gundar-Goshen, Czech Television’s Middle East specialist Jakub Szántó and translator Magdalena Křížová.

Interpretation from Hebrew provided.

Ayelet Gundar-Goshen (1982) studied psychology at university in Tel Aviv and screenwriting at Jerusalem’s Sam Spiegel Film and TV School and has won several prizes for her screenplays and short films. She is among the brightest hopes of contemporary Israeli literature, as earlier evinced by her 2012 debut novel One Night, Markovitch.Waking Lionshas received the WIZO Prize [v cestine je to omylne “Price” IW] and was listed as one of the 100 most important books of 2017 by The New York Times. A TV serial adapted from it is being made in the US. The novel was translated into Czech by Alžběta Glancová and Magdalena Křížová.