Edeet Ravel is a Canadian-Israeli writer who was born in 1955 in Sasa, an Israeli kibbutz near the Lebanese border. Her family relocated to Montreal, Quebec, Canada when she was seven. At age 18 she returned to Israel to attend Hebrew University where she received a B.A. and M.A. in English Literature. She returned to Montreal to complete an M.A. and Ph.D in Jewish Studies at McGill University and a Masters in Creative Writing at Concordia University. She subsequently taught at McGill, Concordia and John Abbott College. She was married to Israeli pianist Yaron Ross and currently lives in Guelph, Ontario with her daughter by a second marriage.
Ravel taught Jewish Studies at McGill, Creative Writing at Concordia and English at John Abbott College. She resigned from teaching in 2002 to write full-time.
Her novels Ten Thousand Lovers, Look for Me and A Wall of Light form a trilogy about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the effects of war on ordinary lives. The novels broach difficult subjects, including the interrogation of Palestinians and the Separation Fence. All three books call for mutual understanding and an end to the post-67 Occupation. Her books for children aged 10—14, the Pauline btw series, are comedies about a would-be teen author who refers to a How-To guide in order to write her novels. Penguin Canada has announced a forthcoming novel by Ravel entitled Your Sad Eyes and Unforgettable Mouth, about the second generation of Holocaust survivors, scheduled for fall, 2008. Groundwood Books has included in their 2008 list a novel by Ravel, The Saver, for older teens.
Ten Thousand Lovers
In the first book in the Tel Aviv Trilogy, Ten Thousand Lovers, the narrator revisits a relationship she had with an Israeli interrogator in the Seventies. The novel investigates the evolution of language, the way meaning is manipulated for political and ideological ends, and the tragedies of war.
Look For Me
Look For Me takes place during the second Intifada and tells the story of Dana, a photographer living in Tel Aviv, whose husband vanished following an accident during his army service. Dana describes demonstrations in Jerusalem and the West Bank, where she photographs the conflict.
A Wall of Light
This novel traces a day in the life of a deaf math teacher who travels to East Jerusalem in search of a man she met briefly in the morning. Tel Aviv in the Fifties and Eighties are evoked through two additional narrators. The theme of the role of interpretation in political conflict continues to play a central role in this novel.
