Pain, Paperback

A powerful, astute novel that exposes how old passions can return, testing our capacity to make choices about what is most essential in life.

Ten years after she was seriously injured in a terrorist attack, the pain comes back to torment Iris. But that is not all: Eitan, the love of her youth, also comes back into her life. Though their relationship ended many years ago, she was more deeply wounded when he left her than by the suicide bomber who blew himself up next to her.

Iris's marriage is stagnant. Her two children have grown up and are almost independent; she herself has become a dedicated, successful school principal. Now, after years without passion and joy, Eitan brings them back into her life. But she must concoct all sorts of lies to conceal her affair from her family, and the lies become more and more complicated.

Is this an impossible predicament, or on the contrary a scintillating revelation of the many ways life's twists and turns can bring us to a place we would never have expected to be?

Zeruya Shalev was born at Kibbutz Kinneret. She is the author of four previous novels; The Remains of Love, Love Life, Husband and Wife, and Thera, a book of poetry and a children's book. Her work has been translated into twenty-five languages and won multiple awards including the Corine International Book Prize and the Welt-Literature Award. She lives in Jerusalem.

Sondra Silverston is a native New Yorker who has been living in Israel since 1970. Among her published translations are works by Israeli authors including Eshkol Nevo, Etgar Keret, and Amos Oz, which won the 2013 National Jewish Book Award for fiction, among others.