״A Map of Getting Lost ״: On Shimon Adaf's Sunburnt Faces

Abstract

Through a reading of Shimon Adaf's third novel, Sunburnt Faces, the following article presents a new interpretation of an old tension existing in Jewish culture, the tension between "a place" and "the place." The novel's protagonist moves from Netivot where she spends her childhood, to Tel-Aviv, the centre, where she lives as an adult. Dekel argues that this movement has similar characteristics to the movement from "a place" to "the place," as both begin with a similar wish, both create a certain tension and both, once fulfilled, end in disappointment. A reading of this movement in Sunburnt Faces exposes these characteristics and their importance to the creation of voice and identity in the novel. Dekel further argues that the type of movement from periphery to centre in Adaf's novel resembles a recurrent movement in the literature of the Haskalah. She shows how these seemingly unrelated texts and times draw a similar map, presenting a similar movement within their respective local spaces, putting aside nationalism and Zionism and suggesting they be secondary to the narrative.