GOVRIN, Michal << back to list Michal Govrin is a poet and writer. She is also a theater director and specializes in Jewish theater and ritual. Govrin received her Ph.D. at the University of Paris for her thesis, Contemporary Sacred Theater, dealing with theater and religious ritual. Among the pioneers of Jewish experimental theatre, Govrin has directed Award winning performances in all the major theatres in Israel.. She teaches at The School of Visual Theater, and is the academic chair of the Theater Department of The Emunah College, both in Jerusalem. She has taught at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, presents an annual lecture at The Cooper Union School of Architecture in New York, and is a former Writer in Residence and Aresty Senior Visiting Fellow at the Center for the Study of Jewish Life at Rutgers University. Michal Govrin received several awards such as The Margalit Award (Israel), the Creation Prize (Tel Aviv Foundation for Literature and Art), The Tel-Aviv Foundation Publication Prize and the Kugel Prize for Literature, Prime Minister’s Prize for Writers (Israel) for her literary works and directing theater. Her latest collection of poetry, And So Said Jerusalem: Hymns and Poems, was recently published. (photo © Rachel Shlomit Brezis) Web site http://www.michalgovrin.com/lit.html Bibliography & Foreign sales SNAPSHOTS (Fiction) 2002 How do we hold the torn pieces of our story, asks Ilana Zuriel, a rebellious left-wing architect who returns to Israel after a stormy life of love and creativity in the capitals of the Western world. Her renewed encounter with the reality in Israel and her sitting in the sealed room with her two children during the Gulf War create a deep change in Ilana. This intense novel tries to capture and encompass the Zionist-Israeli story through the heroine’s relationship with her father, husband, Palestinian lover and, especially, her beloved city of Jerusalem. Jerusalem is defined as a female city and as a feminine place. One is permitted to take pride in her beauty and present it for all to see, but the moment she glances aside at others, the punishment immediately follows. This amazingly relevant novel destabilizes with savage anarchic humor an entire line of cultural and political stereotypes. Rights sold to: USA, Riverhead NY; France, Sabine Wespieser Editeurs; Israel, Am Oved Reviews ”There is something beautiful and destabilizing in Michal Govrin’s second novel – a kind of a fever charged with turmoil, as if someone saying ”I don’t know anymore where I am”. The heroin in Snapshots died in a car accident and we know where she is now but where was she during her life? From one fragment to another, the doubts and the joys of her character present themselves, leaving all the same immense grey zones. Like in any existence, the stability of days hides a dizzying discontinuity. ”How to tell it differently? Otherwise, how to tell? How to hold the fragments of our torn story?” In the game of mirrors and in interactions proposed in the novel, these questions are posed not only to the characters but are gripping the reader.” Le Monde de Livres ”It’s a book burning with passion, hope and nostalgia. The poet and theater director Michal Govrin delivers an intimate and imaginative journal where the emotions and wounds are equally intense. From New Jersey to Jerusalem, and via Paris this feverish reverie is the story of retrieving origins, whispered to oneself as a prayer. [Ilana, the heroine] is attached, even on the midst of war to her architectural project – ”the insolence of a Utopia”. This relentless dreamer encores her inspiration at the depths of tradition, and opens an ancient and salvaging dialogue with the Scriptures.” Le Figaro litteraire ”It is impossible to summarize this abundant novel in a few words – it is as cerebral as it is carnal/sensuel capturing the reader with the ambition to embrace the disappointed dreams of half a century of national history across the destiny of a woman.” Le Figaro Magazine ”… the formidable book by the Israeli novelist (Michal Govrin) translated into French for the first time is a superb portrait of a woman divided between ideal and reality… …the plot unwinds through multiple voices: they overlap, answer each other across time and place, detail a landscape, pick up a conversation or record a lived moment. These short or long fragments, organized according to their place of writing (New York, Paris, Jerusalem etc), offer genuine happiness to the reader. They nourish, accompany, question and reveal the not only the heroine to herself, but the reader as well. Anecdotal and philosophical, they compose the portrait of a passionate, politically left leaning woman who is animated by ideals and attached to her own as well as the freedom of others and who is forced to interrogate her roots. Snapshots is a discovery of a true literary voice” Le Soir ”Snapshots recalls the fragility of all existence and the vanity of the desire to possess” Nouvel Observateur ”… Sebald in Israel.” Forward “…it is a clear artistic achievement both in creating the characters’ relationships and in building the small scene in the cleanest and purest way without exaggeration…Michal Govrin who started her literary career as a poet finds in the novel the most delicate and sharp expression to what Baudelaire called “small poems in prose” .This book is indeed “a great poem in prose”. Ha’aretz Book Review THE NAME (Fiction) 1995 The spiritual journey of Amalia, who had who had intended to enact a suicidal sacrifice as a means of saving God and the Nation of Israel. The narrative juxtaposes and blends events from her life and her growing understanding of a flawed and imperfect God. Rights sold to: World English, Riverhead, New York; Israel, HaSifria HaHadasha/HaKibbutz HaMeuchad Reviews “The question of forgiveness and repentance is at the center of this book that you should read.” Jacques Derrida “A deep and impressive novel ... without pretension and sentimentality, with all its joy and sorrow.” Aharon Appelfeld “superbly introspective novel about religious fanaticism and misspelled identities...” Forward “...Govrin conveys her tormented heroine’s increasing dementia in a lush, lyrical monotone...” Publishers Weekly “Your novel is a strong and ambitious work and I admire it. It’s the kind of novel that challenges the form itself, that draws it into new shapes, and it depicts an extreme state of mind, which I find fascinating…” Don DeLillo “A deeply intense, lyrical, passionate book, a masterly literary project that takes over mind and soul (and body, also, if one may say so, and I think we may). The sensual discourse of faith and doubt, the learned questioning and dreaming, the commitment, detachment, wound and revelation are, constantly, inspired and inspiring, moving, stimulating, appealing. Not an easy performance for such a dense, profound, knowledgeable book.” Norman Manea THE JOURNEY TO POLAND (Non-Fiction) 1999 Essay on the realization in stages of the full reality, of the author’s inherited memory of her mother’s holocaust past. Published in: Partisan Review, 1999/4; forthcoming publication in the following anthologies: Second Generation Voices, Syracuse University Press USA; In God’s Name, Berghahn New York-Oxford; Body of Prayer, Words and Voices, Cooper Union Publications, USA