Dolly City

by Orly Castel-Bloom, Dalya Bilu (Translator)

Overview

" Dolly City--a city without a base, without a past, without an infrastructure. The most demented city in the world." In the midst of a futuristic-primitive metropolis, the accumulation of all our urban nightmares, Doctor Dolly (certified by the University of Katmandu) finds a newborn baby in a black plastic bag, and decides to become a mother. Overcome by unfamiliar maternal urges, Dolly dispenses with her private lab of rare diseases and turns all her surgical passion onto her son, who she names "Son." Ceaselessly cutting and sewing, Dolly is the scalpel-wielding version of the all-too-familiar Jewish Mother, forever operating upon her son with destructive, invasive love. In this grotesque satire of war and the defensive measures taken to survive it, Orly Castel-Bloom, one of Israel's most provocative and original writers, turns her own scalpel upon that most holy of institutions, the myth of motherhood--and its implications in the work of a nation. Gruesome, irreverent, and hilarious, Dolly City is widely recognized as one of the most disconcerting--and brilliant--works ever written in Hebrew.

Dalkey Archive Press

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781564786661
Publisher:	Deep Vellum Publishing
Publication date:	10/05/2010
Series:	Hebrew Literature
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	176
File size:	237 KB

About the Author

Orly Castel-Bloom
was born in Tel
Aviv in 1960 and is a leading voice in contemporary
Hebrew literature.
She is the author of eleven books and was twice the recipient of the
Prime Minister’s Prize.

Dalya Bilu lives in Jerusalem and has been awarded a number of prizes for her translation work,
including the Israeli Ministry of
Culture Prize for Translation, and the Jewish Book Council Award for
Hebrew-English Translation.

Editorial Reviews

This strange and searing novel (after Human Parts) follows the exploits of Doctor Dolly as she traverses a nightmarish Tel Aviv-like metropolis known as Dolly City. Her University of Katmandu medical training not recognized in Israel, Dolly is unable to legally practice medicine and instead experiments in her home lab on animals she infects with diseases of her own invention. But when Dolly finds an abandoned baby wrapped in a plastic bag, her maternal urges are unexpectedly awakened, and as she grows more and more obsessed with her son--whom she names Son--she succumbs to a madness manifesting itself as fanatical concern with Son's health and the conviction that cancer is everywhere. Dolly's agitated mind increasingly parallels the deterioration of Dolly City, "the most demented city in the world," besieged by "Arabophobia" from within and French air raids from without. This parable about motherhood, nationhood, and the intersection of the two is never less than gripping, though its insistence on the graphic depiction of life in a war zone--whether private or public--sometimes makes it tempting to look away. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"From the first pages, Dolly City asserts itself as an important text . . . Kafka has finally arrived in Tel Aviv." —Le Monde

From the Publisher

Dolly City is an irreverent and witty satire, an original and timely tour de force about the Yiddishe-mama complex. Drifting and alienated in a hostile city, Mother Dolly (Israel) doctors her adopted son with a love that destroys, until she learns the meaning of compassion.”

Times Literary Supplement

Castel-Bloom is one of Israel’s most original and outrageous writers. She pushes her themes to the limits, often to the cutting edge of madness. Her masterpiece, the novel Dolly City, takes on the theme of motherhood with the blackest of humor . . . With energy and a sense of play, Castel-Bloom reveals the nihilism, violence and sadism seething within us all.”

Jerusalem Report

From the first pages, Dolly City asserts itself as an important text . . . Kafka has finally arrived in Tel Aviv.”

Le Monde