Where I Am by Shem Shem-Ur

Where I Am by Shem Shem-Ur

"Serves up heaping portions of yearning, passion, alienation, and regret, and establishes Dana Shem-Ur as one of the rising stars of the new Israeli literature."--Joshua Cohen, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Netanyahus

A piercing novel about life abroad in a cultural setting not one's own: Reut is an Israeli translator living in Paris with a French husband and their child. She's made sacrifices for her family but now feels a simmering discontent and estrangement that erupts at a festive dinner party with affluent, intellectual friends. During the sumptuous meal, she navigates a tangle of cultural codes with which she's never been fully at ease. This is a novel about big life choices that examines a woman's attitudes toward belonging to a man, to a culture, to a language. Where I Am is an intimate, witty book portraying a profoundly human yearning to stop everything, to lay down one's head, and to feel--if only for a moment--at home.