On the shores of Israel’s Sea of Galilee lies the city of Tiberias, and in Shemi Zarhin’s novel Some Day, it is a place bursting with sexuality and longing for love. Zarhin’s hypnotic writing renders a painfully delicious vision of individual lives behind Israel’s larger national story.

The air is saturated with smells of cooking and passion. Young Shlomi, who develops a remarkable culinary talent, has fallen for Ella, the strange neighbor with suicidal tendencies; his little brother Hilik obsessively collects words in a notebook. In the wild, selfish but magical grown-up world that swirls around them, a mother with a poet’s soul mourns the deaths of literary giants while her handsome husband cheats on her both at home and abroad.

Shemi Zarhin was born in Tiberias in 1961, and is a novelist, film director, and screenwriter who has created some of the most critically acclaimed and award-winning films in the history of Israeli cinema, including Bonjour Monsieur Shlomi (2003), Aviva My Love (2006), and The World is Funny (2012). He now teaches filmmaking at the Sam Spiegel School in Jerusalem. Some Day is his first novel and was a best-seller in Israel.

Text:
Some Day by Shemi Zarhin. Translated by Yardenne Greenspan. New Vessel Press, 2013.

Music:
Etz Ha’Alon by Yehoram Gaon
Baladah LaChovesh by Yehoram Gaon