Ayelet Tsabari’s first two books, the short sto­ry col­lec­tion The Best Place on Earth and the mem­oir The Art of Leav­ing, earned pres­ti­gious lit­er­ary awards and attract­ed read­ers all around the world. Those read­ers will cer­tain­ly wel­come her first for­ay into the nov­el. Songs for the Bro­ken­heart­ed is immer­sive, dis­tin­guished by sharp and agile prose, a remark­able cast of ful­ly real­ized char­ac­ters, and spell­bind­ing sto­ry­telling. And when it comes to bear­ing wit­ness to the vibrant his­to­ry and cul­ture of gen­er­a­tions of Israel’s mar­gin­al­ized groups, the nov­el is an unpar­al­leled triumph. 

Tsabari ele­gant­ly weaves togeth­er two sto­ry­lines, the first of which is set in the over­crowd­ed squalor of an immi­grant camp in the ear­ly years of Israeli state­hood. The begin­ning of a great but for­bid­den love between two young peo­ple launch­es the nar­ra­tive. Yaqub, an orphan from North Yemen, stum­bles across a girl his age and is imme­di­ate­ly smit­ten. Their poignant and intense attrac­tion is just one of the many col­or­ful threads form­ing this novel’s rich tapestry. 

Set in the volatile sum­mer of 1995, the sec­ond sto­ry­line is nar­rat­ed by Zohara, who has been liv­ing in New York and strug­gling with a dis­ser­ta­tion project she no longer finds inspir­ing. Zohara is a com­plex pro­tag­o­nist, at times mor­ti­fied by what she thinks of as ​“prim­i­tive” aspects of her her­itage, and at oth­er times tak­ing a per­verse plea­sure in self-exoti­ciz­ing her iden­ti­ty among her Amer­i­can peers. While on vaca­tion in Thai­land, she learns of the sud­den death of her moth­er in Israel. Return­ing to her mother’s house in a Yem­i­ni neigh­bor­hood in cen­tral Israel to mourn and clean, Zohara uncov­ers entranc­ing tapes of her mother’s singing (lyrics of which are del­i­cate­ly inter­wo­ven through­out the nar­ra­tive) as well as arti­facts tes­ti­fy­ing to a star­tling secret. Grad­u­al­ly, Zohara gains a deep­er appre­ci­a­tion of the com­plex­i­ty and qui­et hero­ism of her mother’s life, and the beau­ty, joys, and sor­rows of a cul­ture she has often resisted. 

After liv­ing abroad, Zohara comes to rec­og­nize that as painful­ly defi­cient as Israel is, it is inex­tri­ca­ble from her psy­che. She rec­og­nizes both the indi­vid­ual and col­lec­tive sources of her anger: 

Israeli anger was a man­i­fes­ta­tion of help­less­ness, of grief. This was a nation of migrants, exiles and sur­vivors, peo­ple who fled from geno­cide and per­se­cu­tion only to arrive at this place where wars nev­er end … where bor­der towns are shelled, bus­es explode, malls and cafes are blown up. A coun­try erect­ed on the ruins of oth­ers, the oppres­sion of oth­ers. The con­flict was every­where; you couldn’t look away from it, and God knows, we tried. This was the rea­son we built an armor, con­struct­ed a bubble.” 

And yet, despite every­thing, Zohara says that ​“this was the only home I knew. Flawed, imper­fect, but home. And though my sense of belong­ing was frac­tured, still I belonged here more than any­where else. Maybe that’s why I held on to this dream of peace so des­per­ate­ly. I need­ed to believe we were head­ing some­where better.” 

Zohara’s return also brings her clos­er to her sis­ter Lizzie and her extend­ed fam­i­ly, espe­cial­ly Yoni, a well-inten­tioned nephew who falls under the omi­nous influ­ence of a far-right youth move­ment. Then there’s Nir, a Mizrahi gro­cery work­er Zohara bare­ly remem­bers from their school days, whom she grad­u­al­ly sees in a much dif­fer­ent light. Through the shift­ing rela­tion­ships between these and oth­er mem­o­rable char­ac­ters, Tsabari deft­ly explores the flu­id nature of self-under­stand­ing and our under­stand­ing of others.

The mur­der of Yitzhak Rabin is not the only trau­mat­ic episode in Israel’s his­to­ry addressed in this emo­tion­al­ly intense nov­el; Tsabari also chron­i­cles the still bare­ly rec­og­nized kid­nap­ping of Jew­ish Yemenite babies by the Ashke­nazi estab­lish­ment. As intri­cate as all this sounds, the nov­el nev­er once los­es its foot­ing. Tsabari mas­ter­ful­ly fore­grounds the social upheavals of two trans­for­ma­tive his­tor­i­cal eras, illu­mi­nat­ing inter­gen­er­a­tional schisms and heal­ing in unex­pect­ed ways. And to Tsabari’s cred­it, she por­trays Zohara, who often seems like the author’s own sur­ro­gate, as a lik­able but some­times obtuse young woman. We wit­ness both her virtues and flaws as she grad­u­al­ly awak­ens to the joys and wis­dom of the Yemeni oral poet­ry of her mother’s gen­er­a­tion and all it represents: 

“How many of us real­ly know our par­ents? Espe­cial­ly women. They didn’t want to be known. They were taught to be qui­et, to take no space. They believed their sto­ries had no val­ue. I used to ask Ima about her life, and she kept say­ing, ​‘There’s noth­ing to tell.’” 

By this point, Zohara and the read­er have rea­son to know better.

Like the pro­tag­o­nist of Songs for the Bro­ken­heart­ed, Tsabari was born in Israel to a fam­i­ly of Yemeni back­ground and has worked and trav­eled exten­sive­ly out­side of Israel. Here, she employs her insid­er – out­sider per­spec­tive in ways that are psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly astute and cul­tur­al­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed. This soar­ing nov­el does jus­tice to it all: the fever­ish highs and lows of love affairs, per­son­al and col­lec­tive forms of grief, tem­pes­tu­ous fam­i­ly dra­mas, issues of gen­der and belong­ing, and Israel’s divi­sive pol­i­tics. Like Zohara’s moth­er her­self, it sings.