As Yair Lapid was about to become Israel’s next prime minister, his wife of 32 years, Lihi Lapid, also received good news: Strangers, the author’s novel, was sold to international publishing house Harper Collins.
“This is a great and exciting achievement, a dream come true,” said Lapid.
According to the agreement signed by the Israel Institute of Hebrew Literature, Strangers will be published in English by Harper Via, a subsidiary of Harper Collins that publishes translated literature from around the world. Strangers will be the first Hebrew book it publishes.
Published by Keter around a year ago, Strangers is the third novel from Lapid, a writer, lecturer and journalist. It immediately became a bestseller and received critical acclaim. The book revolves around an unusual relationship between a young woman who ran away from home and an old lady with dementia from Tel Aviv, who mistakenly believes the young woman to be her granddaughter.
Lapid weaves an exciting, suspenseful and touching plot that is very Israeli, about families seeking correction, about distance and closeness, about a past that never lets up, about the warm connection between strangers who were not supposed to meet, and about the unexpected places where love grows,” wrote Keter.
About the book itself, Lapid said that “I wrote their story for six years. I wrote the majority of it at night in bursts of almost unconscious writing, almost without a mind, with only a heart. Perhaps that is why it is written differently from everything I have previously written. [It features] writing that explodes like thoughts at night. It is not always organized, but it is always full of honesty and truth.
"This is a small story about connection and love. It is about what is important in life."
Lihi Lapid, author of Strangers
“Two women who do not know each other, a young girl and an old woman, meet in a stairwell early in the morning. They need each other – they are bound. Slowly, through a screen of concealment and lies, a strong truth about the need for love and connection is revealed. Especially now, after a year of corona, when the elderly suffered relentless loneliness and young people lost their togetherness and were abandoned in front of the screen, this is a small story about connection and love. It is about what is important in life.”