"The First Day" and Other Stories
"Who knew? That a Jewish village in Eastern Europe was observed by a skeptical, feminist eye, transformed into agile, delicate, earthy stories, written in Hebrew, a language never learned by most women? That a world of men and of women, deserted, divorced, unloved--later decimated by the Nazis--could spring to life again, in stunning translations that expose the stories' biblical moves and modernist countermoves? Now we know: Hebrew fiction and English fiction just gained an astonishing foremother. Sit, take a bite, read."—Mary Felstiner, Professor of History at San Francisco State University, author ofTo Paint Her Life: Charlotte Salomon in the Nazi Era"We know the voice of the shtetl through Shomlom Aleichem, I. B. Singer, and others; now we have a woman's perspective in the work of Dvora Baron. This mysterious, eccentric author is wonderfully translated for the first time in English, just as Israelis are beginning to treasure her.  It is a triumph for literature, for women, and for readers that she is now available to us."—E. M. Broner, author ofA Weave of Women, The Telling,andBringing Home the Light