Ariela Freedman

Arabic for Beginners Ariela Freedman

Fiction. Jewish Studies. When Hannah accompanies her husband and small children to Jerusalem for the year, she becomes fascinated with a group of expat women at her son's daycare, as well as a young Palestinian woman named Jenna. As she grows close to Jenna she starts to question her own marriage and her relationship to Israel. A novel of domestic and political ambivalence, ARABIC FOR BEGINNERS is about marriage, motherhood, friendship, nation, and the complicated ways we think of home.

Freedman brilliantly captures the existential and alienated state that mothers of young children inhabit. Freedman's work is reminiscent of Rachel Cusk and Deborah Levy. &#8212Heather O'Neill

ARABIC FOR BEGINNERS brings into sharp relief a young mother's sabbatical year in Jerusalem in the era of the Gaza war. This is a brave, intelligent and impressive literary debut. &#8212Elaine Kalman Naves

This account of a Canadian family's year in Israel is a study of tensions both national and interpersonal, and of the reasons relationships survive or fade away. Freedman's subtle, graceful prose spans the large and the small, the wondrous and the quotidian, as it explores the question of how certain places&#8212and certain people&#8212come to feel like home. -- Abigail Deutsch