It’s Me, Iowa
Representatives of thirty countries have come to the celebrated writers’ workshop in Iowa. Galit Dahan Carlibach is one of them, and she makes herself the heroine of this novella. She arrives at the workshop, where an unexpected tale of obsession, passion and menace commences. The author, a married woman, falls madly in love with a young man at the workshop and is swept away into a love affair that reopens old wounds. She is sucked deeper and deeper into this destructive relationship, until its deadly denouement.
This is passion-filled novella by one of the most interesting writers in Israel today. It begins as a memoir about the writing experience, the journey to the renowned Iowa writing program, the encounter with writers from so many, so different countries. But in a manner that is full of humor and self-awareness, the author gradually deviates from the expected, respectable and commonplace story and takes her readers into the unanticipated realm of obsessive love. Dahan Carlibach’s writing is muscular and painterly, and the choice of allowing the heroine to stray so far is a courageous one.
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“ A very dark comedy taking wild fictional liberties in Philip Roth fashion… From the beginning, Dahan Carlibach’s alter ego has irreverent fun with the political pecking order at the program”
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“The story takes us far away to the cornfields of the United States, only to shine a searing spotlight on the Israeli reality in which the personal and the public are always comingled .”
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“Dahan Carlibach rises above the provincial and sweeps the reader away with her toward the bloody and wonderfully enjoyable collision.”