Esther Peled is not like other Israeli authors. First of all, she is a woman. While the Israeli literary scene has its fair share of prominent and prolific female authors, the heavyweights of this industry — David Grossman, Etgar Keret, A.B. Yehoshua, Amos Oz — are undeniably male.
But for Peled, who last month won the Sapir Prize for Literature, Israel’s highest literary honor, gender just scratches the surface of her refusal to follow convention. “Widely Open Underneath,” Peled’s collection of linked short stories that stunned the Israeli literary community by triumphing as this year’s dark-horse candidate for the honor, traces the life and loneliness of a middle-aged woman, told over the course of 34 short stories that together build a complete puzzle of her emotional and romantic life.
