A gripping family saga of love and exile, as one woman confronts identity, prejudice, and generational trauma when her daughter’s forbidden romance threatens to unravel everything she’s fought to preserve.

SYNOPSIS

The Anatomy of Exile is a sweeping family saga that begins with a forbidden love between a Palestinian and a Jew—one that ends in tragedy and sets generations on a path shaped by loss, identity, and displacement. In the aftermath of the Six-Day War, Tamar Abadi’s world is shattered by a death tied to a hidden romance. Her husband, Salim—both Arab and Jewish—struggles to reconcile his dual identity as grief pushes the family to start over in America. There, Tamar fights to preserve their Jewish Israeli identity, but her beliefs are challenged when her daughter falls in love with a Palestinian neighbor. Determined to prevent history from repeating, Tamar’s choices threaten to fracture the very family she is trying to protect. This powerful debut novel explores love, exile, and the painful, transformative ways identity evolves across generations.

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WHY WE LOVE THIS BOOK

"I wholeheartedly endorse this book. Beautifully written and deeply moving, it can be read on many levels. While the immediate story is about the struggles of Israeli's and Palestinians to live their lives, all the relationships (mother and daughter, husband and wife, sisters and brothers) that are depicted strike a deep chord of recognition within the reader."

Rita Frank
Great Jewish Bookshelf committee member

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

 

Zeeva Bukai is the author of the novels, The World Between and The Anatomy of Exile winner of the 2025 National Jewish Book Award for Debut Fiction. Her stories have appeared in Carve Magazine, The Master’s Review, Mcsweeney’s Quarterly Concern, and elsewhere. Her honors include a fellowship at the New York Center for Fiction, residencies at Hedgebrook Writers Colony, and Byrdcliff AIR program in Woodstock NY. She is the recipient of the The Master’s Review fall fiction prize, the Curt Johnson Prose Award, and the Lilith Fiction Award. Her work has been anthologized in Smashing The Tablets: Radical Retellings of the Hebrew Bible, Frankly Feminist: Short Stories by Jewish Women from Lilith Magazine, and Out of Many: Multiplicity and Divisions in America Today. She holds an MFA from Brooklyn College and is the Assistant Director of Academic Support at SUNY Empire State University. Her novel, The World Between is forthcoming from Delphinium Books February 2026. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.

ZeevaBukai.com