Literary Reflections on Trauma: Raufman and Hazani's New Works
Ravit Raufman's novel *The Right Deed* and Asaf Hazani's collection *Terrain Analysis* offer profound literary explorations of life, trauma, and identity in the shadow of October 7.
The literary landscape in the shadow of the October 7 tragedy has witnessed a flood of publications, yet few capture the psychological weight of the era quite like Ravit Raufman’s novel HaMa'aseh HaNakon (The Right Deed), published by Shtayim. Raufman, a clinical psychologist and head of the Department of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of Haifa, centers her narrative on a mother whose daughter attended the Nova music festival and whose fate hangs in a terrifying balance. Rather than descending into hollow melodrama, Raufman approaches the unspeakable with a microscopic, deeply empathetic lens. Her protagonist reflects on childhood games of minimizing massive creatures—like shrinking a mammoth found frozen near Siberia—contrasting her instinct to scale down the colossal with the societal compulsion to inflate and compete over the magnitude of national catastrophe. Through poignant prose, Raufman explores the fragile threads of ordinary life that snap before the earthquake hits, offering an artistic masterpiece that avoids cheap exploitation.
Mapping the Terrain of Conflict and Identity
Complementing this emotional excavation is Asaf Hazani’s brilliant short story collection Nituah Shetah (Terrain Analysis), published by Ivrit. Hazani, an IDF officer and native of Jerusalem’s Old City, brings a profound sociological and geopolitical eye to his fiction, following his acclaimed anthropological war diary. The collection opens with "The Burden of Malachi," written just a month before October 7, presenting a dystopian journey across a future Israel through the eyes of a reserve battalion commander turned mid-level defense bureaucrat. Hazani navigates complex themes of nationalism, religious rhetoric, and the fractured relationship between citizens and the state. In "A Diner's Dream," he examines an East Jerusalem family operating an unauthorized hummus stand amidst Wadi Joz garages, caught between local survival and the seductive corporate offers of a Turkish giant. The final story, "Paula's Gospel," transports readers to the shadow of a northern Italian mountain, where a local hotel owner wrestles with childhood trauma and an epic psychological ascent. Across their respective works, both Raufman and Hazani insist that facing reality head-on, without evasion or sensationalism, is the only true path forward.
