Dorit Shiloh

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After completing her PhD thesis and teaching at various universities, including La Sorbonne, Ecole Normale Supérieure in Lyon and Tel Aviv University, Dorit joined the Israeli publishing marketplace as an editorial coordinator at the Achuzat Bayit Publishing House. A writer, professional editor and translator, she specializes in quality literary translation (having translated into Hebrew works by Romain Gary, Pierre Lemaitre and Romain Puértolas to name a few), and writes book reviews for Haaretz newspaper. Since 2017, she has been the co-founder and editor of the leading Israeli literary journal HaMussach.

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Her debut book, The Countdown (2020), was sponsored by the Rabinovitch Foundation and Israel’s Ministry of Culture, was awarded the Jewish National Fund's Yitzhak and Rachel Goldberg Foundation Hebrew Literature Prize for a Debut Book (2021), and was chosen as an Outstanding Book of the Year 2020 by Haaretz.

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Title: The Countdown

Short Stories

Publisher: Pardes

Year: 2020

114 pp.

 

Translation rights: World

Audio visual rights: World

Translation: Partial French translation by Laurence Sendrowicz. Partial English Translation by Yardenne Greenspan

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The book was awarded the Jewish National Fund's Goldberg Foundation Hebrew Literature Prize for a Debut Book (2021) and the Jacqueline Kahanoff Israeli prose book award for 2023.

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The characters populating the stories of The Countdown are united in how they contemplate their place in the world—not just geographical location, but also mental and temporal space. Crafted with a precise hand and unique style, Shiloh’s stories present captivating protagonists full of humor and self-awareness, able to look askance at both themselves and at the world around them. 

 

The story "Mercy" brings Jerusalem and Dublin come together. For two years now she has travelled from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, to teach Hebrew at the Catholic school in Jerusalem. Divorced, lonely, she has just found out that she cannot have children. Vincent, a Dominican friar from Dublin, is her student. The bond that develops between them transverses the teacher-student relationship, taking them on a journey of trust, friendship, and love—until the revelation of the secret that upends their relationship, taking it into uncharted territory.

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In the story "Abramovich’s Trucks", the "trucks" of the title sit patiently in Dr. Abramovich’s waiting room. He is an experienced surgeon; bariatric surgery is his specialism, specifically adjustable ring surgery, for limiting the passage of food to the stomach. His patients are young women, strangers to one another and all dreaming of becoming thin. Abramovich’s assistants call the patients "trucks," because "pushing the bed into the operating room is hard when they are lying on it, it takes at least two orderlies to get the task done." "Abramovich’s Trucks” is a bold and original story, laying bare the lives of young women suffering from eating disorders. It casts light on their passions and dreams, detailing the misery that drives an industry that feeds off them and sabotages their bodies.

 

Originally written as a play, the story was first published in the prestigious literary journal Ho! to great acclaim.

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Critical Praise

 

Winner of the Jacqueline Kahanoff Fiction Award 2023.

 

The book was selected an Outstanding Book of the Year 2020 by Haaretz.

 

In her book, Dorit Shiloh demonstrates a flirty irony, alongside depth and originality […] she has charisma, a healthy helping of humor and self-irony, and an ability to write about complex, at times traumatic occurrences, free of pathos and free of pretention. 

Haaretz

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A delicate and sparse collection of observations and short stories […] worthy of every praise. Shiloh is a master of language.

Maariv

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[I think] this is one of the first literary descriptions in Hebrew of living with a bariatric ring, certainly the first I’ve encountered. About 20 women sitting in the clinic, in different phases of silence and noise, overt sobbing and restraint. It is precisely this extreme situation which accentuates Shiloh’s capacity to maintain a vocal, particular narration, specifically thus to touch the physical pain, the vortex of self-blaming, hope for change, absurdity and humiliation… and something just to be funny.

Yediot Aharonot

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Dorit Shiloh’s poignant collection […] is painful, but smart, and able to evoke bitter smiles.

LaIsha

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