See You Soon, My Second Novel is Being Written

Living in the United States for sixteen years was quite an experience for me. I had no idea how my life would look like when I first got to Washington State. I was a young mom of a two-year old boy, pregnant with our second boy. I fell in love with the place and the people, but didn’t like the grey and the cold weather at all.

During this long period of time in my life I faced many challenges, and experienced lots of things I loved, but I also noticed how hard it was for me to raise my kids far from family, in a different culture and in a different language.

When I finished writing my first novel, Daughters of Iraq, I knew I had to write another novel, this time about the life of a spouse in the United States. That’s what I’m working on now.

I also wanted to experience writing a novel through letters. The famous Italian author, Natasha Ginsburg, wrote like this and she’s influenced me greatly. I’ve read all her books.

I started writing my second novel in letters, and after a while I had a feeling that I needed to add another level to my writing, so I wrote about a woman living in a small apartment in Tel Aviv. I wasn’t sure what brought her there. She isolates herself from society, hurting. I soon discovered that she left her family in the US and went back home to Tel-Aviv. Why did she do it? Why is she isolating herself? I was not sure in the beginning, but slowly I learned her story as I wrote it, and hope that one day you will be able to read.

There is a third level to my novel and it is our true story, our biography as immigrants living in the US, and our moving back to Israel. Our story is revealed through my blog posts that have been published for almost two years in “Haaretz,” one of Israel’s main newspapers.

I write my novels first in Hebrew. Wishing for all people who will be interested in reading my books to be able to read them in English, I am hoping to be able to publish my second book in both languages, again, as I did for my first book, Daughters of Iraq.

—
Revital Shiri-Horowitz is the award-winning author of Daughters of Iraq, a novel based on the true life events of her family’s exodus out of Iraq to Israel in the 1950s to escape persecution.