The scotiabank Giller Prize finalist
Finalist for the Regional commonwealth writers' prize
"Ravel has written a book that shimmers with suspense, mystery and wit. Tell your friends."
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Toronto Star "Like the great Israeli novelist Amos Oz, Ravel employs the contemporary family unit - a group of disparate people thrown together by genetics or happenstance, loyal to one another despite their differences, and planning for a shared future they can't predict - as the ideal metaphor for the Jewish state.... She recognizes the cynicism and anger felt by those who have suffered, and her valuable novel offers the simple wish that they will feel love, too - for each other and for life itself."
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The Globe and Mail "Edeet Ravel has managed, once again, to write about Arab-Israeli politics without doing any violence to art. This is no mean feat, considering how things are in the Middle East today.... It's fiction, but it makes for more satisfying reading than the facts."
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The Gazette (Montreal)
"Ravel is a master of conserving detail and uses it in an almost painterly fashion, while leaving us with the sense of a mystery unravelling teasingly before us.... Ravel's Vronskys are always determined in their apparently insensible decision-making. What makes them appealing is Ravel's skill for portraying a sense of universality."
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Jewish Independent "If you want to get a feel for what the texture of life is like in Israel, these are your novels." -Ottawa Citizen
"Ravel is a strong, politically astute writer and scholar."
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Quill & Quire
Praise for Look for Me "[
Look for Me] is a novel with a strong moral centre, one that argues forcibly and honourably for an end to hatred and violence. . .The dialogue is crisp, the plot compelling, and the glimpses of the ongoing war are powerful. Not a false note anywhere."
--Cynthia Holz,
The Globe and Mail
Edeet Ravel was born on a Marxist kibbutz in Israel near the Lebanese border and lived there until she was seven, when her parents returned to their hometown of Montreal. Ravel returned to Israel at the age of eighteen to do a B.A. and M.A. in English literature. After five years of studies in Israel, she returned to Canada, where she completed an M.A. and Ph.D. in Jewish Studies at McGill and an M.A. in Creative Writing at Concordia University. She taught for two decades (Holocaust Studies, Hebrew Literature and Biblical Exegesis at McGill, Creative Writing at Concordia University, and English Literature at John Abbott College).
From a very young age Edeet knew she would become a writer. She wrote for many years, completing several unpublished novels before publishing Ten Thousand Lovers, a novel set in Israel. As soon as Edeet started writing about Israel, she became involved in peace activism, first in Montreal and then in Israel.
A Wall of Light (2005) is the third novel in Edeet's Tel Aviv trilogy, a series of novels connected loosely by theme and following the lives of strong female narrators searching for love amidst the turmoil of modern Israel. The trilogy includes Ten Thousand Lovers (2003), a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award, and Look for Me (2004), winner of the Hugh MacLennan Prize. A Wall of Light was nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and for the Regional Commonwealth Writers' Prize. It won the Canadian Jewish Book Award for 2005.
Edeet lives in Guelph, Ontario, with her daughter, Larissa.