13 Facts About Amalia Kahana-Carmon

Amalia Kahana-Carmon was an Israeli author and literary critic.

Amalia Kahana-Carmon was awarded the Israel Prize for literature in 2000.

Amalia Kahana-Carmon was born in Kibbutz Ein Harod on 18 October 1926.

Amalia Kahana-Carmon moved to Tel Aviv as a child and studied at Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium, but her studies were interrupted by the 1948 Palestine war where she served in the Negev Brigade of Palmach as a signals operator and wrote the famous telegram for the capture of Eilat.

Amalia Kahana-Carmon began writing in the 1950s but is not considered to be part of the Palmah Generation, a movement that dominated the literary scene in the 1940s and 1950s, nor the Generation of Statehood, a counter-movement to the Palmah Generation.

Amalia Kahana-Carmon's writing differed from these groups in an important way: it centered around the individual rather than national ideals.

Many believe that Amalia Kahana-Carmon's writing was influenced by Virginia Woolf because of their shared lyrical, poetic style, but Amalia Kahana-Carmon commented that this relation was due to similarity in thought rather than any influence.

That being said, Amalia Kahana-Carmon believed that all writers were outsiders, not because of social rejection but because others were incapable of understanding their commitment to their crafts.

Many have tried to translate Amalia Kahana-Carmon's writing, but she rejected their attempts, believing that her work was untranslatable.

Amalia Kahana-Carmon writes about the lives of traditional women in male-dominated environments before marriage, during war, or during university years using a lyrical style that explores the depths of her characters' emotions.

Furthermore, Amalia Kahana-Carmon's characters are outsiders in their societies because of their genders, classes, or races.

Amalia Kahana-Carmon reaches independence as a merchant through dialogue with this freed slave, where both characters are gender and race conscious.

Amalia Kahana-Carmon was inspired by gender critiques from Simone de Beauvoir.