Book talk featuring Zeeva Bukai, author of the newly released novel, The Anatomy of Exile.

Featured Presentation

Jewish Arts and Bookfest
Sunday, May 4, 2025

at UC Berkeley’s Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, 2121 Allston Way, Berkeley,  CA

In this book talk, author Zeeva Bukai will present photographs, articles and documents from her family histories and talk about how these stories are woven into The Anatomy of Exile, her debut novel that explores Jewish identity, Mizrahi – Ashkenazi marriage, and forbidden love between an Israeli and Palestinian.

About The Anatomy of Exile

“A sprawling epic about diaspora, war, immigration and the lasting scars of intergenerational trauma; one that lands with particular power and poignance amidst the latest Israel-Hamas war. Equally impressive is that The Anatomy of Exile is Bukai’s first novel.”–Forward

The Abadi Family saga begins when a modern-day Romeo and Juliet story between a Palestinian and a Jew ends in predictable tragedy. The family flees to America to mend, but encounters only more turmoil that threatens to tear the family apart.

In the wake of the 1967 Six Day War, Tamar Abadi’s world collapses when her sister-in-law is killed in what appears to be a terror attack but what is really the result of a secret relationship with a Palestinian poet. Tamar’s husband, Salim, is an Arab and a Jew. Torn between the two identities, and mourning his sister’s death, he uproots the family and moves them to the US. As Tamar struggles to maintain the integrity of the family’s Jewish Israeli identity against the backdrop of the American “melting pot” culture, a Palestinian family moves into the apartment upstairs and she is forced to reckon with her narrow thinking as her daughter falls in love with the Palestinian son. Fearing history will repeat itself, Tamar’s determination to separate the two sets into motion a series of events that have the power to destroy her relationship with her daughter, her marriage, and the family she has worked so hard to protect. This powerful debut novel explores Tamar’s struggle to keep her family intact, to accept love that is taboo, and grapples with how exile forces us to reshape our identity in ways we could not imagine.

About the Author: Zeeva Bukai

Zeeva Bukai was born in Israel and raised in New York City. Her stories have appeared in Smashing the Tablets: Radical Retellings of the Hebrew Bible, CARVE, Image, Lilith, Masters Review, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, December and elsewhere. Her honors include a fellowship at the Center for Fiction, and residencies at Hedgebrook, and Byrdcliffe AIR Program. She is a recipient of the Curt Johnson Prose Award, the Lilith Fiction Prize, and the Masters’ Review Fall Fiction Prize. She holds an MFA from Brooklyn College and is the Assistant Director of Academic Support at SUNY Empire State University. She lives in Brooklyn with her family. The Anatomy of Exile is her first novel.