Kahana-Carmon, Amalia

▪ Israeli author

born 1926, Kibbutz Ein Harod, Israel

      Israeli author of novels, novellas, short stories, and essays, whose modern style influenced subsequent generations of Israeli writers.

      Kahana-Carmon was raised in Tel Aviv. She served as a radio operator in an Israeli army combat unit during the Arab-Israeli war of 1948–49. At Hebrew University in Jerusalem, she studied library science and philology. She was secretary of the Israeli consulate in London and later worked as a librarian at Tel Aviv University.

      In 1966 she published her first collection of stories, Bi-khefifah ahat (“Under One Roof”). Unlike anything before it in Hebrew literature, the book was an immediate success, and it became so influential that in 2007 it was deemed to be among the most important books written during Israel's history. Along with Amos Oz (Oz, Amos) and A.B. Yehoshua, Kahana-Carmon became a key figure in the new wave of Israeli fiction of the 1960s. Unlike her contemporaries, however, she wrote about the inner lives of women, exploring a realm of desire and fantasy more subjective than the Zionist themes then prevalent in Israeli literature. Her later writing often concerned itself with individuals who are marginalized by society and who revolt against established orders and expectations.

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