Heatwave and Crazy Birds

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If you bothered to add the smart-aleck, belittling review of the Publisher Weekly, which says more on the reviewer and maybe on the audience of the journal, than on the extraordinary quality of this book, why don't you balance it with this one: Library Journal ­VERDICT Heatwave and Crazy Birds by Israeli author Avigur-Rotem's originally published on 2001 is an extended rumination on history and family. Though the wait is long, the payoff is great.-Lauren Gilbert, Sachem P.L., Holbrook, NY In Israel this novel received a wall-to-wall ovations and crowned as the best novel published in Israel in decades. Please let me just quote from more than a dozen reviews written on this novel in its "Homeland" Israel: It happens once in many years: a novel is born that the fortitude of talent that is concealed in it, stirs the reader and awards him with the feeling that something outstanding was created. A novel full of human love which is forbidden not to be read. Heatwave and Crazy Birds is the best novel published in Israel in decades. One of 10 Israeli novels ever written, that I would take to a secluded island. (Prof. Shaked [the "High Priest" of Hebrew Literature Research] Ha'aretz) Gabriela Avigur-Rotem, a writer who has no public relations machine working for her, or a history of cover stories in the weekend magazines, or photos in the celebrity columns of the dailies, is "The Queen of the Castle". She has bypassed all the literary greats and wrote the best work of fiction written in Israel in recent years. (Dalia Karpel, in Ha'aretz weekend magazine). A huge and significant literary achievement and success. A fascinating novel on the individual and the general; on the place and on home. At last, a serious, courageous literature. Better do the readers and read this novel to refresh the concept "Art". (Yoram Meltzer. Maariv) A stimulating, arousing work of tremendous value; rich and sensitive. Serious and deep artistic creation, full of precise observations of the Israeli existence and experience. (Prof. Holzman, Yedioth Aharonot) This is a book that its readers will bite with great pleasure like in a gourmet, rich dinner. Refined and rich writing, original and unique, a work of art deciphering with diligence and love. Wonderful book, fascinating and colorful, written in a sensual, heady language, gracious and generous (Yehudit Rotem, Writer; Book Magazine -Ha'aretz) A unique book. Gabriela Avigur - Rotem wrote THE story of an Israeli generation born in a storm, and took off in a trail of so many hopes, on Israel, and the end to dreams. I thank Avigur - Rotem AND happy with her and with the literature world on writing this book. A solid course in literature, from which you can move on. This is the book I've been waiting for years in order to read great literature. Avigur - Rotem juggle the language, its treasures and new inventions. This writer knows to build a complex story, embroidered from thousand various tissues connected to one another in a masterpiece work of art. This book is solid art. Not for one minute the heart skip a beat of disappointment from some fall of forgery, or lack of accuracy, an emotional bliss, or lack of authentication. Everything here is true, compatible, and yet as just created. Gabriela Avigur - Rotem is a serious and comprehensive writer. The burst of this book to the public awareness is characteristic for a good book, with nothing to sell but itself. (Talma Agmon, Ma'ariv ) A great book that awards literature with its lost taste. An internal study of Lost Time, diving incredibly deep, in an outstanding beautiful language, into the map of our life here in Israel, with all the tastes and smells and colors. It tells a story in which the language serves to decode and to draw the sights, and to be precise to the limits of possibilities. That's what makes Gabriella Avigur - Rotem the best writer in Israel as Prof. Gershon Shaked said before me. (Menahem Ben, Zman Tel - Aviv) What is amazing about Avigur-Rotem is that she is a real genuine author. She is unusually erudite, highly educated and exceptionally talented. She lives in the world of literature and is part of the literary tradition. She does not get up in the morning and scribble something and out comes a book. She goes along and examines things and does not produce books in a flash of talent. She sits for years and writes version after version and goes back and polishes. This is considered exceptional today in the literary world. She has a commitment to the art. There are very few authors like Avigur-Rotem today--authors for whom literature is a way of life. You read the novels by Avigur-Rotem and you think of the famous American writer and Nobel laureate William Faulkner. Not only because of the level of intensity of the experience, but also because of the quality of the writing. She is a giant of an author, and for many years I have not heard reactions like the ones I have heard about her novel Heatwave and Crazy Birds. (Prof. Yigal Schwartz, Ha'aretz)