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When Israeli novelist and journalist Lihi Lapid signed with HarperCollins, one of the storied "Big Five" publishing houses, she was living the dream every fiction writer chases.
Lapid's debut novel, On Her Own, was being translated into English, was already being adapted into a television series, and was set to launch in Manhattan in May 2024. But in a candid, deeply personal conversation with The Jerusalem Report editor-in-chief Ruth Marks Eglash, Lapid reveals what really happened in the months leading up to her publication date.
HarperCollins searched for three months and could not find a single Manhattan bookstore willing to host her launch. One store eventually offered to let her come into the back storage room, sign copies in private, and have them quietly placed on shelves. "A lot of times, the most horrible things are quiet," Lapid tells Eglash. "It just vanished."
The interview moves well beyond one author's experience into the broader, uncomfortable terrain of how the literary world has treated Israeli and Jewish writers since October 7.
Lapid described daily petitions calling for Israeli books to be pulled from translation and Israeli films removed from festivals, even when the authors themselves were vocal critics of the Israeli government.
Anti-Zionism affects literature
On Her Own contains no politics. It is a family story about an aging mother grieving the son she lost in the army decades earlier. None of that mattered. What did matter, Lapid found, was where she went next. A small Jewish publishing house run by Zibby Owens picked up her earlier book, retitled it I Want It to Be Wonderful, and rushed it to print.
Within a week, it was on the USA Today bestseller list, a sharper commercial result than anything the big five machine had delivered.
The conversation widens from there into some of the most urgent questions facing Jewish creative life today. Should Israeli authors keep fighting for space in the mainstream, or build their own parallel channels? How did Israelis and Diaspora Jews each discover, after October 7, how badly they need one another? And why, Lapid asks, does the world insist on casting Israel as Goliath when Israelis see themselves as David?
She also offers the writing advice handed down by her famous mother-in-law, novelist Shulamit Lapid, a single sentence aspiring writers will want to hear in her own voice. In the closing minutes, she opens up about life at home as her husband, Yair Lapid, joins forces with Naftali Bennett ahead of yet another Israeli election.
It is a rare, unguarded look at what it costs to be an Israeli storyteller right now, and why Lapid, unmistakably, is not done telling.