תרגום לאנגלית של אהבה, ספר הפרוזה הראשון, המשובח, של מעין איתן, המתוארת בגרסה האנגלית כ-A literary sensation in Israel. בווירטואוזיות לשונית ובשפה שאינה נזקקת להצדקות פסיכולוגיות או פילוסופיות שואלת איתן כיצד יכולה להתקיים אהבה בעולם שקיימת בו גם זנות.
Love is a fever dream of a novel about a young sex worker whose life blurs the boundaries between violence and intimacy, objectification and real love. Startlingly vulnerable and lyrically deft, Maayan Eitan’s debut follows Libby as she goes about her work in a nameless Israeli city, riding in cars, seeing clients, meeting and befriending other sex workers and pimps. In prose as crystalline as it is unflinching, Eitan brings us into the mind of her fierce protagonist, as Libby spins a series of fictions to tell herself, and others, in order to negotiate her life under the gaze of men. After long nights of slipping in and out of the beds of strangers, in a shocking moment of violence, she seizes control of her narrative and then labors to construct a life that resembles normalcy. But as she pursues love, it continually eludes her. She discovers that her past nights in cheap hotel rooms eerily resemble the more conventional life she’s trying to forge.
You didn't have any friends
You had a terrific laugh. You had long legs, big tits, a flat belly. No, you were fat. You came from ruined homes, well-off families, your parents were madly in love with each other. Your father was an accountant, a kibbutz member, homeless, a linguistics professor at a university. He loved you like his youngest daughter. You were an only child. You were born to a large family, after years of treatments, you were adopted. Immigrated from Ethiopia. You were good at math, you majored in accounting. Hebrew literature. Kinesiology. You wanted to work with children, become a lawyer, your mother was a drug addict (sobered up without help), your uncle was a doctor. No, he was in jail, for attempted murder. You were blond, in summer the ends of your hair were bleached white. No; your hair was as black as a raven, and curly. You were born in Saint Petersburg. No no: your parents came from America, you were born in the suburbs, you replied to them in Hebrew when they talked to you in a jumble of foreign languages. You spoke Russian until you were seven then you forgot it, the snow too. You knew no other language but Hebrew.
