Women Authors From The United Kingdom

"Bill looked straight through the old man. His thoughts were very far away. ("Becoming a Tramp")"

"The women had descended on the Lane like locusts, looking for bargains. ("Breaking the Fast")"

"His eyes burn like torches but he does not say a word. He looks at his mother with pity and clenches his small fists, thinking of Khetskel, of Shoshe, and of a way to escape. ("Shloyme")"

"Esther Singer Kreitman was called many things in her lifetime: unattractive, household drudge, hysteric, epileptic, madwoman, controlling mother, a woman possessed by a dybbuk. These were the words—or epithets—her family used. Less often used were the words that should have been associated with her: novelist, short story writer, translator."

"As the only female writer in what many consider the most singular family in the history of Yiddish literature, Esther Kreitman and her small literary output have been overshadowed by the voluminous works of her brothers I.J. and I.B. Singer. Her notable contribution to Yiddish literature, unheralded in her lifetime, was to write in Yiddish in support of the haskalah (Jewish enlightenment) from a female perspective, an achievement made all the more remarkable by her lifelong struggle with depression and perhaps other undiagnosed emotional and physical illnesses which disrupted her ability to write. Her ruthless depictions of women’s place in hasidic society remain as painful as fresh wounds. In her autobiographical novel Der Sheydim Tants (Deborah) she wrote: “In his heart of hearts, Reb Avram Ber disapproved of his wife’s erudition. He thought it wrong for a woman to know too much, and was determined that this mistake should not be repeated in Deborah’s case. Now there was in the house a copy of Naimonovitch’s Russian Grammar, which Deborah always studied in her spare moments, but whenever her father caught her at this mischief he would hide the book away on top of the tiled stove out of her reach, and then she would have to risk her very life to recover it.”"

"In modern Yiddish writing, the moral, spiritual, and emotional capital of generations of Jewish women was utilized by male and female writers alike...Female prose writers, such as Fradl Shtok, Esther Kreitman, Rokhl Korn, Kadia Molodowsky, and Khava Rosenfarb, also deepened the awareness and understanding of the feminine contribution to Jewish civilization."

"The festive season was over, and this was the time of year when an old folk song haunted the air in town and village an old familiar melody that evoked a smile here and a sigh there: "Father, my Father, winter is drawing near, And Father, O Father, a Jew should know no fear, But look, O look, the snow is falling fast, And hark, O hark, at the spiteful wintry blast. See, there goes my roof, the water's coming through, Hurry, Father, hurry, send succour to a poor old Jew!""

""So there's no lack of poverty anywhere-not even in Warsaw! Ah, well, you'll find plenty of misery everywhere..." (Chapter VIII, p150)"

"Sometimes, however, even the poems failed her, her harrowed mind would not be soothed, and then she would run out of the home and post herself in the gateway of the house. Or she would lean up against a lamp-post which stood a few yards away and which had not been lit up for years, and she would watch the children at play, gaze after the passers-by who came and went, intent on their trivial tasks, completely absorbed in their humdrum, humble lives. Healthy-minded people. They got on with their work stead-fastly, and it never entered their minds to ask what was it all about? What did they live for? Why? Why? (Chapter VI, p98)"

"Hannah's words had pricked her like a needle. (Chapter III, p35)"

"She was standing over the candles and with both hands covering her face she had softly poured out her heart to God in heaven. ("Breaking the Fast")"

"People make their way through the library like a dense forest, not knowing where it begins or where it will end. ("Two Libraries")"

"The baker's wife, who had been tut-tutting as her husband spoke, rejoined: "That's how they are. They don't know anything about compassion. For them, if you have money, you're lucky. If you don't, you can start digging your own grave. ("Becoming a Tramp")"

"It was my father’s dream that every child should be well-educated, well-fed and well-housed because he was a great believer that that was the equalizer of mankind. No matter what your background, no matter where you live or come from, if you have the opportunity of education, then you can become anything you want to become. And this was my father’s great dream and focus."

"Millions of people in the world – including in Hong Kong, Afghanistan, Uganda, Thailand, Egypt and Syria – are prepared to die for the vote and this dabbler is contemptuous of that right. Incidentally, Isis and al-Qaeda share that contempt. As for revolutions – has Brand ever experienced one?"

"Eighty per cent of our newspapers are anti-PC. There is no area that is not up for discussion. I do not believe that people go around on their tiptoes afraid to offend women or ethnic minorities. But we have become worse at the exchange of ideas. We are not good any more at having really honest debates without upsetting people. We have become very good at abusive, hysterical exchanges and less good at intelligent debate. We do need to develop a healthy trade in ideas."

"Pregnant with my first, I remember thinking I’d probably be having a boy, which I put down to inbuilt patriarchal bias – boys come first, in the sexist world that surrounds us. The baby was Rosie. Second time around, my expectation was that I’d have a boy this time, which was perhaps based on the law of probability; the new arrival was Elinor. Third time around, I was convinced I was having a boy, but the person who emerged was Miranda. And by the time I got to Catriona, I was absolutely certain I’d be having another girl – and I was."

"Proponents of the "smears" and #itwasascam narratives tend to see two oppositional camps: either you are a genuine socialist and sincerely committed to the Palestinian cause, or you are an anti-Corbyn liberal washout and advocate for Israel. This false dichotomy must be rejected outright."

"Whatever your views on Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions – and there are many – [[George Galloway|[George] Galloway]]'s move is plainly an own goal (assuming his goal is to support Palestinians, rather than generate publicity for himself). One reason that many left-leaning Jews don't join the BDS movement is precisely because the boycott is perceived to be about rage against people, rather than an effective political tool. What's the best way to cement that belief? Announce you're avoiding Israelis as part of your commitment to BDS. Cue a flood of "told you sos" from those who say its all about punishing Israelis just for being who they are."

"Every British Jew has their own family story – of emigration and immigration, of threats and losses, but also of community and belonging. My own family’s journey to the UK from Iraq via Israel – two places fatefully touched by the influence of empire – may explain my own lack of shock at the callous, divisive and biased treatment of minority communities by the British political class, Labour included. Remembering Britain's history is not an excuse for today's politicians, or a minimisation of the real and noxious racism that still permeates our society. But it should be a reminder that for many in Britain, the experience of racism is still the norm and not the exception."

"[Following Boris Johnson's three days in intensive care with Covid-19 in spring 2020] A national leader in critical condition is an unsettling jolt, especially in the midst of an anxiety-drenched pandemic. But in Britain’s news media, the prime minister’s condition seemed to crowd out concern for others, and the exaltations of Mr. Johnson dampened scrutiny of his government’s failures."

"But Mr. Johnson had set a terrible example at work, breezily claiming he'd shaken hands with Covid-19 patients, crowding into Parliament and undermining health messages with his joshing delivery. Meanwhile, dozens of doctors and nurses were dying of the virus, among them several of the thousands who had answered the government call to come out of retirement to work in the N.H.S. during the pandemic. Reports emerged of staff members "bullied and shamed" into treating Covid-19 patients without the equipment needed to protect themselves, which the World Health Organization had warned in early February would be needed in vast supply."

"[[w:Noam Shuster-Eliassi|[Noam] Shuster]] worked with a women's health organisation in Rwanda before becoming a co-director of the Israel programme at Interpeace, a peacebuilding organisation set up by the UN. Shuster concentrated on a project working with Jewish settlers, the ultra-Orthodox and other groups either resistant to or excluded from standard peace camp initiatives. For Shuster, reaching out to such communities was a key part of conflict resolution, but the UN disbanded the project in 2017."

"She started writing jokes, in Hebrew, Arabic and English, trying to communicate the topics and ideas she had felt unable to broach within the confines of the peace industry. "You start with open mic slots, you bomb, you fall on your face a million times, you sharpen your material,” she says. But there was a receptive audience for a half-Iranian Israeli woman cracking jokes about the absurdities and injustices of Israel's decades-long military occupation."

"[On Oh Jeremy Corbyn: The Big Lie] The film does make central an argument based on antisemitic conspiracy layered upon conspiracy. First, there is the idea that Jewish groups within Labour and in Britain are de facto pro-Israel fronts. Then, that such groups nefariously exerted outsized power – “orchestrating” the demise of a Labour leader, no less – and that Israel was pretty much behind all of this. Hence claims of Labour antisemitism were only ever false – indeed they are exclusively referred to as "smears" throughout the film’s narrative voiceover."

"We might also add, to those defending the film on the grounds that it features several Jewish voices, that this is a terrible fig leaf. Would we apply the same logic to people of colour dismissing the legitimacy of claims of anti-Black racism or Islamophobia? One would hope not."

"Everyone can, hopefully, agree that a connection to Israel should not make British Jews a target for antisemitism, which spikes every time that tensions in the region escalate. We might also agree not to infer that anyone with a "connection" to Israel automatically supports the state's violent policies towards the Palestinian people. But from there on, things get murky. One can passionately disagree with a British Jewish person’s appraisal of the Gaza war as "self-defence", but not be motivated by anti-Jewish hatred. One can be distressed by the apocalyptic images coming out of the Palestinian strip and wonder how anyone might justify such horrors, yet not be fuelled by antisemitism. But the different motivations lying behind criticism have been terribly conflated amid a fearful Jewish minority and its established leadership."

"Omnipresent on our screens, the redoubtable Shabi is one of the few Corbyn supporting commentators to be taken seriously by the media. Thoughtful and fluent, she deserves her massive rise in this year’s list."

"Shabi contends that the need to show a united front against the common enemy has meant that Israel has taken a long time to confront this discrimination [against Mizrahi Jews] and develop the equal opportunities so familiar to us in modern Britain. What is more, she argues, consigning the Mizrahi Jews to a lower status than Ashkenazi Jews has resulted in a huge missed opportunity for improving Israel's relations with its neighbours."

"Israel has changed radically since the days of its Ashkenazi founding fathers and mothers but Shabi's important book is nonetheless a wake-up call to modern Israeli society. For a nation to be able to call itself a true democracy, all of its citizens must feel equally enabled and valued."

"... Where do the Neanderthals fit in? They take us way back beyond fingers tracing beasts on stone walls. While it's impossible to pinpoint the 'first' of their kind, they became a distinct population 450 to 400 thousand years ago (ka). The night sky then hanging over earth's many hominid populations would have been alien, our solar system light years away from its current position in a never-ending galactic waltz. Pause halfway through the Neanderthals' temporal dominion at around 120 ka, and while the land and rivers are mostly recognisable, the world feels different. It's warmer and ice melt-swollen oceans have flooded the land, shoving beaches many metres higher. Startlingly tropical beast roam even the great valleys of Northern Europe. In total, the Neanderthals endured for an astonishing 350,000 years, until we lose sight of them — or, at least their fossils and artifacts — somewhere around 40 ka."

"Neanderthals knew all sorts of landscapes and climates and different geographies. There is so much more to Neanderthals than the popular image of them ... I wanted to really try to share the way that archaeology is like a multi-disciplinary discipline and a lot of what we do actually is about world-building and how we look at the Neanderthals ... recreating the contextual world."

"Neanderthals went through repeated cycles of cold conditions and then warm conditions where there were forests developing. ... When musk oxen turn up in the archaeological record, most of the time there are not Neanderthals."

"“Her work has a strong international focus and interest, particularly in relation to Africa where she is closely involved in the recognition and reward of creative literary talent and with the development of relevant skills.”"

"You can’t always change a government or stop the government from taking resources that should be dedicated to education but you can as editors work together to professionalise and set up standards and to attract all this to you"

"People may say there is no reading culture but people always read newspapers, we are always in conversation and people spend money for example on locally produced DVDs in Nigeria. Making books affordable is the biggest thing because for example if someone produced pulp fiction that is written really well and was not costly, that would improve the reading culture"

"A writer is going to write a novel and that writer may or may not only be from Uganda. I think too often when people are thinking about writers from the continent, there is this huge responsibility to produce some kind of great African book and that is nonsense. One writer writes one book that does or doesn’t succeed and that book will not necessarily be a Ugandan novel"

"I would be terrified but you know, terror is not a reason not to do something infact that is a good reason to do something"

"Sometimes I wish things had been done better but I try to switch off that side of my brain but you will know yourself, it is impossible to do that. And if I want to change too much then I will stop reading the book. I used to have a rule that I would finish every book I started but if it is not good enough I will stop because now I realise I have got limited reading time so it has to be really good"

"Nothing is a guilty pleasure. I am a big science fiction junkie. I love crime fiction. But sometimes you reach the decision that life is too short. I have so many hours left to me and there are other things I need to read"

"In the Midwest, the weather is extreme; when it is hot, it is very, very hot and when it is cold, it is very, very cold. All that had a very big impact on me and my mother says I did not speak for six months while I was figuring things out and when I did start speaking English I had a stutter"

"But I think that moving around absolutely has an impact. It’s your connection with language. I remember moving from one language to another as a child and finding it deeply traumatic. The fact that people who looked like me could not understand the language I was speaking had a big impact on me so when I first learnt how to speak English I had a very bad stutter"

"The National Conversation is an invitation to join some of our country’s most talented thinkers as they explore the ways in which literature can have an impact on our lives, and to engage in finding solutions to the challenges facing writers and readers in our complex world. Beyond the questions we’ll ask is the real hope that this will indeed be a conversation about an art form that is as varied and dynamic as those who produce it. A conversation that includes any and all of us who have ever fallen into the pages of a book and found a place that felt like home"

"As we begin a national conversation on our reading, writing and engagement with books, it seems fitting to provoke a discussion about the reasons we think books (and their authors) are important"

"Books are about expressing ourselves as human beings, connecting with each other, telling our stories and imagining new worlds and new possibilities"

"Books are for pleasure and entertainment. For escape. They are also for information, discovery, guidance, discussion, debate and so much else besides"

"“my kids joke that I’m going to die with a pencil in my hand”"

"One doesn't just happen upon a belief that work must be meaningful, that our endeavours must be towards the well-being and betterment of our fellow human beings. It is something that is taught. And this college, is one of the places I learned that lesson."

"“This is a wonderful opportunity to be part of a team that has, over time, published with such great flair and innovation. I am excited to be joining Canongate and to have such an inspiring brief—to contribute to a list that reflects range, ambition, passion and a genuine belief in the power of writing to enrich and inform.”"

"“Ellah is the best of the best when it comes to commissioning and editing. We are thrilled that she is joining Canongate. We need books that look beyond the horizon if we are to understand the challenging ways in which the world is changing, and those are the books that Ellah has found instinctively for more than two decades. I can’t wait to see which writers she champions first.”"