"A Girl in a Blue Shirt", a book by Prof. Gabriel Ben-Simhon, has been translated into Arabic literature and will be published by Casablanca.
The book "A Girl in a Blue Shirt" by Prof. Gabriel Ben-Simhon in Arabic-Literary Translation
An important landmark in Israeli literature:
"A Girl in a Blue Shirt", a novel written by Gabriel Ben-Simhon, is about to be published in Morocco, translated into Arabic.
This is probably the first Israeli book directly translated for publication in Morocco, close to the normalization agreement signed between Israel and Morocco last month.
At the center of the novel "A Girl in a Blue Shirt," which was published in Hebrew in 2013 by Yedioth Books, is the boy Jonathan Marciano, who is writing a diary about his family's immigration from Morocco.
In Israel, Yonatan falls in love with Nurit, a Sabra who is in love with Holocaust survivors.
The novel takes place in the lower city of Haifa - a center of social and communal tensions in Israel in the 1950s and 1960s.
Gabriel Ben-Simhon - writer, playwright, and professor emeritus in the Department of Film and Television at Tel Aviv University - was born in 1938 in the city of Tsafro, near Fez, Morocco.
He immigrated to Israel with his family in 1947 on the ship "Yehuda Halevi" - the first illegal immigrant ship from North Africa.
In a conversation with "Israel Today", Ben-Simhon says that the novel was translated into Arabic by Prof. Muhammad al-Madlawi of Rabat University, who previously translated short stories written by Ben-Simhon on various stages in Morocco.
"Writing prose is not so common in Morocco itself, and it seems easier to write prose about life in Morocco when you are outside it, as I write," he says.
The book will be published by la croisée des chemin Casablanca, and is now sold in Arabic translation on Amazon.
Ben Simhon also reveals that the establishment of literary ties between the two countries also involves Andre Azoulay, King Muhammad VI's senior Jewish adviser and a very well-known figure in relations between the two countries.
Ben-Simhon is misleading that the translation of the book is into Arabic-literary, which is read in all Arab countries, and that yesterday he even received interest around him from officials in Abu Dhabi.
"There are also readers in the United Arab Emirates who are looking for writing on Jewish-Arab issues, and I hope that the publication of the book in Morocco will help the momentum of peace between Israel and Arab countries," he said.