Amalia Kahana-Carmon

Amalia Kahana-Carmon, (b. 1926, Kibbutz
Ein Harod, Israel), Israeli author of
novels, novellas, short stories, and
essays, whose modern style influenced
subsequent generations of Israeli
writers.
Kahana-Carmon
was raised in Tel Aviv. She served as a
radio operator in an Israeli army combat
unit during the Arab-Israeli war of
1948–49. At Hebrew University in
Jerusalem, she studied library science
and philology. She was secretary of the
Israeli consulate in London and later
worked as a librarian at Tel Aviv
University.
In 1966
she published her first collection of
stories, Bi-khefifah ahat (“Under One
Roof”). Unlike anything before it in
Hebrew literature, the book was an
immediate success, and it became so
influential that in 2007 it was deemed
to be among the most important books
written during Israel’s history. Along
with Amos Oz and A.B. Yehoshua, Kahana-Carmon
became a key figure in the new wave of
Israeli fiction of the 1960s. Unlike her
contemporaries, however, she wrote about
the inner lives of women, exploring a
realm of desire and fantasy more
subjective than the Zionist themes then
prevalent in Israeli literature. Her
later writing often concerned itself
with individuals who are marginalized by
society and who revolt against
established orders and expectations