À la recherche du Levant perdu : des écrivains d’Israël racontent l’Égypte

• Main Author: Rina Cohen Muller
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales 2009-12-01
• Series: Yod
• Subjects: Zohar Nisim; Goren–Gormezano Itzhak (1941-); Matalon Ronit (1959-); Israel; literature; twentieth century
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/yod/362

Novels, written by Israeli of Egyptian origin – Nisim Zohar, Itzhak Goren–Gormezano and Ronit Matalon – have been published since the late 1970's. They all tell similar autobiographical stories: the easy and comfortable life in Egypt during the 1940-50's, the departure, the complex integration in the Israeli melting pot and the dislocation of the families. All these narratives are focused on memory and identity. For Zohar it is a question of remembrance, for Goren-Gormezano it is nostalgia and mourning for the past. For Matalon the issue is the formation of an Israeli identity, that does not eradicate the Egyptian past but integrates it in a new construction, going towards a Near-Eastern understanding, based on the vision of the long lasting tolerance culture in that area.