Böcker av Batya Casper

Each day Sarah spread a cloth on the space between our houses and sewed her wedding canopy.Each day she embroidered another rose onto the whitest of muslins. She waited, sitting on the grass in her sweater and scarf. We didn't open our door, never came out, yet she knew we could see her. That was satisfaction enough.What happens to loyalty and betrayal during war? Do they hold back? Wait for a more opportune moment? Or do they rush in, impose themselves over the deadlier, more longlasting pain of tragedy and loss, and complicate everyday lives even further?

As their lives unfold, the three women find themselves facing choices they would never have envisioned.In my heart, I call to their mothers, 'Take your sons to your houses. Bind them to your chairs: gag them, blindfold them if necessary until they grow calm. Then teach them, for they have forgotten, about peace, about the blessed life, about a future-a present-without pain.Beneath their prayers, in their morning cups of coffee, beneath their love-making and their child-rearing, and in their sorrow, especially in their sorrow when burying their dead, I hear the simmering of heating souls; I smell the charge of armies, of lives exploding uselessly into smithereens.I sit in mourning over a disaster still to come. In Israel, the lives of three women interweave with the story of their country. Ratiba, an Israeli journalist, turns her back on her heritage to marry an Israeli Arab. Her sister Orit, an actor, lives alone and longs for her lost sister. Elisheva is a nurse who dedicates her life to the wounded and the dying. As their lives unfold, the three women find themselves facing choices they would never have envisioned. This is a story of secrets and alienation, yet also of hope and heroism. It is about Arabs who save Jews from disaster and Jews who heal Arabs. It is the story of everyday people torn and desperately searching for the right path. Here, the ancient pulsates in present time and the biblical holds prominence with the secular. Beneath this modern-day drama unfolds the story of a land and its people, revealing the historical trajectory of two peoples, victims and perpetrators of a biblical curse. 'This perspective, poignant novel offers a fresh and essential outlook on Israel. With memorable characters and an abundance of drama, Israela is gripping reading. '-Lou Aronica, New York Times bestselling author

Shakespeare's Hamlet - written 2,000 years after the classical Greek period - follows a narrative pattern similar to that of the Greek Electra myth, and it isn't the only story to do so. We see signs of Electra's influence again in the 20th-century works of Oscar Wilde, Eugene O'Neill and T.S. Eliot, among others.This revised and updated edition looks more closely at the influence of Electra on popular culture throughout history and the questions it poses regarding oppositions such as logic versus instinct, night versus day and repression versus freedom."This is the perfect read for those who enjoy history, mythology, educational and psychological studies of theater and literature throughout the centuries." -Reviewed by Tony Espinoza, Pacific Book Review"Succinctly written and impeccably researched, Casper's study examines not only the character of Electra but also many key components and notions of early civilizations."-Reviewed by Mihir Shah, US Review of Books

Explores the influence of the Greek Electra myth on theatre, from Shakespeare's Hamlet - more than a thousand years after the classical Greek period - to the twentieth-century. As we read the plays in this volume, we will question: Are we still locked into theses oppositions? If so, how do they effect the world we live in?