Books
The Geography of Wild Hope
In Geography of Wild Hope, Anita Goldman investigates our (Western Civilization’s) relationship to Nature through personal and poetic essays. She looks at the writings, stories and practices that we as a culture has undertaken in relationship to the web of Life that we are a part of, but that we have distanced ourselves from, calling it Nature and ourselves Culture. With the view of the fields outside her country house at the southeastern most tip of Sweden as her vantage point, she scrutinizes the agricultural reforms that very early on dramatically changed the landscape and the social web of Sweden. These far reaching reforms have been taught to generations of Swedish pupils as a part of a proud national story of Progress, that Sweden – like few other nations— has excelled in. But Goldman finds a different, suppressed story line that can teach us something about how to remedy the dire situation for agriculture and a dysfunctional food system today. Goldman, who was awarded an honorary doctorate in Theology by the University of Lund, also delves into the Biblical creation story to figure out what the text says and how it has been interpretated and used and misused for millennials. The Bible is also a text that gives much attention to wilderness and Goldman explores that concept and the further development of wilderness themes, especially as pertaining to American thought and practice, relating to the influence of John Muir, a towering figure in this context but almost unknown in Sweden.
The overall intention of the book is to investigate and elucidate our relationship to Nature, so as to enable a more profound understanding of the mess we are currently in.
If stones could speak in Palma de Mallorca
A historical novel based on true events in Mallorca at the end of the 17th century .
Today millions of tourists walk about the streets of Palma de Mallorca. But few know of the dramatic and atrocious events that took place here for more than three hundred years ago. Even though they occurred so long ago they raise questions of current validity; Why are minorities so threatening to the majority? Who belongs and who must be spewed? Who is a hero and who is a traitor? What is truth and what is falsehood?
There are few writers in Sweden who cover a larger scope than Anita Goldman, who have the same ability to deeply explore their subject matter. In her new novel she has been aided by documents and studies on the spot to recreate the occurrences of May 1691, when Jews who had been converted to Christianity hundreds of years earlier, were burnt at the stake because they had kept their faith and their culture. But in spite of the thorough and cruel endeavors to extirpate Judaism, the family names are still alive and around today.
In “If stones could speak in Palma de Mallorca” the torture, interrogations and the completion of the punishments are depicted. But so is the courage and the cowardice, the fear and the love, the faith and the doubt of the main characters.
And it is all played out at the epicenter of today’s tourism in Palma.
Jerusalem & I
“I got married in Jerusalem, I gave birth to two children here, I had a house in the City and a garden, I learnt Hebrew and Bible and I wrote several books in Jerusalem. But I have never written on Jerusalem, because how do you write about the most depicted city in the world?”
Jerusalem is said to be holy. But how can a city be holy? Who dares to ask the question? And what would be the answer? Jerusalem is the city of eternal peace, but yet so split between Palestinians and Israelis, between religious and secular. Jerusalem is the city of the greatest stories, but in this book the focus is on the individual ’s life and dignity in the midst of myths and monuments.
In a condensed mixture of autobiography and essays Anita Goldman draws a very different portrait of the City fifty years after the Six Day War. “Jerusalem & I” is a declaration of love for the Hebrew language, it’s poets, prophets and writers, it’s female voices.
This book received overwhelmingly positive reviews. I have been lecturing extensively about it all around Sweden, especially in churches.
The Love Curriculum
The Love Curriculum is a candidly intimate novel, a story about passionate awakening, set partly in the kitchen of a Swedish country house. In the novel, the woman called Katja is a television star, who is left by her husband on the first page. Breaking down, she finally goes into therapy. The meeting with the therapist awakens not only deep memories, but also leads to a spiritual awakening and at the same time a great love for the therapist, which leads to a strong erotic bond between them. The novel is divided into two milieus or rooms. One is “The Room with the Yellow Sofa”, the therapy room. The other room is “God’s Kitchen”, a big country kitchen in the Swedish countryside, where the woman sits writing the story of The Room with the Yellow Sofa, trying to” write the man out of her” and trying to gain understanding on a personal and spiritual level about where she has landed with all this. She is also gardening, cooking food, making jellies and chutneys. Recipes are included. It is a rather funny, sensuous and at times quite learned exposition on God and food, on body and soul, on the nature of passion.
Even if I have to travel to Los Alamos
is a mixed fiction and personal travel logg book on the development of the first atomic bomb in Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA , 1943-1945. It tells the story of the people “on the hill” from a new angle, giving prominence to the women around Robert Oppenhemier. It tries to unravel and look more deeply into the modern, scientific project, how it could give birth to weapons of mass destruction and how the de sacralization of the world has affected us.
The book received a best-book-of-the-year stipend from Albert Bonnier’s publishinghouse and in the same year I received the prize as this year’s Moa Martinsson-laureate at a ceremony in Stockholm. Moa Martinsson was the only women in a generation of Swedish writers appearing on the literary scene in the first decades of the 20th century, all of them from extremely poor working class and peasant backgrounds.
The Lightbearers
is a continued and deepening investigation into the themes of my previous book on mysticism, but this time focusing on how spirituality can be sustained in a world of horrors. I depict and analyze individuals who are victims of or actively engaged in the world’s worst conflicts, wars and genocides, but who sustain an inner light and a spiritual presence. One of the portraits is of Dorothy Day. Writing on Dorothy Day has been a cherished opportunity to reconnect with some of the themes that engaged me when I was a member of The Living Theatre forty years ago. I’ve been able to use some of my knowledge and appreciation of American political radicalism, which more often than European and especially Swedish radicalism, has been nourished by spiritual sources.
God’s mistresses
The book contains portraits of a selected few women mystics and also engages in a discussion on mysticism, modernity, the female and the erotic, seen through the prism of women mystics from different ages and religious traditions. Among them are Jewish Etty Hillesum and Catholic Teresa of Avila. Also included is a male mystic, the great Persian poet Hafiz.
The book includes a personal preface on my own spiritual development and received vast media attention. It still sells well in its pocket version.
Two of the essays in the book, on Etty Hillesum and on Hafiz were rewritten as pieces for stage and performed at major venues in Stockholm and went on tour in other cities of Sweden.
I Live Close to Paradise
is a collection of texts previously published in the two biggest daily newspapers in Sweden on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, on female identity in patriarchal cultures, on morality and ethics in the post-modern world and on nuclear proliferation.
Speechless
was published by Natur och Kultur and then re-issued in pocket version by Månadens Bok, the main pocketbook publisher in Sweden, as their Book-of-the-Month-selection, which guarantees large print-runs.
“Speechless” is a contemporary novel on the disintegration of families as I found it at my return to Sweden after 18 years in Israel. It was the first Swedish novel taking a cold, hard look at the negative feelings step-parents can have for stepchildren. It is also a stock-taking of the dreams and ideals of the post ‘68 generation. The language is extremely modern, a kind of experimental on line Swedish. The book received wide attention.
The Song of the Seashell. A book on women and war
is a large and ambitious mixed-genre book on women and war, analyzing this theme from mythological, historical, social and psychological perspectives. One chapter deals with the special situation of Israeli women and the need to identify with a patriarchal war machine and mentality, another is an analysis of the soldier’s relationship to the female as the interior enemy and the external reason to go to war. There are chapters on mythological aspects of the Goddess of Death, on Athena and other war-related mythological themes. One chapter deals with atomic and nuclear weapons and the Bikini bomb tests, another depicts one of the most ferocious female SS guards in the extermination camps. The writer’s personal presence and voice as a mother and a woman living in Israel are strongly accentuated in the text. Extensive media coverage followed publication as well as much lecturing on the themes of the book.
Rita Rubinstein travels on the subway in the best of all worlds
is a collection of short stories depicting a Swedish-Jewish family. Some of the stories deal with Jewish identity in Sweden, while others are set in Israel of today and deal with topics like how the individual is affected by the prevailing threat of violence and terror, IVF-treatment in an Israeli hospital and the pain of infertility in patriarchy, the feeling of a stepmother as her stepson is induced in the Israeli army, etc. The stories are humorous and heart-rending at the same time, their scope ranges from the banal and very modern to the great questions of guilt, entangled family bonds, existential loneliness and longing for love.
Her soul always pure. On Sigrid Hjertén
is a book about the famous Swedish woman painter Sigrid Hjertén, belonging to the generation of Swedish artists who left for Paris at the beginning of last century and studied with the French painter Henry Matisse. Sigrid Hjertén was the only prominent woman in the group and she is generally considered as one of Sweden’s greatest painters of the modernist school. She ended her life in mental hospital, where she died from a lobotomy operation. She was married to the great painter Isaac Grünewald, the only Jew of the group and my paternal grandmother’s brother. The book made great waves when it came out, as it included thitherto unknown correspondence between Hjertén and her husband. It was chosen a book-of-the-Month club first-selection and has sold in more than 20.000 copies.
Burning Words
A novel on Beruriah the only learned woman mentioned in the Talmud, living during the last big rebellion against the Romans, The Bar Kochba rebellion, which led to the Israelites exile from their land, lasting until the establishment of the State of Israel. It grapples with the view of women in Jewish tradition and early sources.
The Daughters of Stones
The Daughter of Stones is a novel set in the village of Ein Karem, Jerusalem during the first year of the intifada (the Palestinian uprising) and is a poignant and painfully honest depiction of the sacrifice of sons and daughters in the Palestinian/Israeli conflict.
The Last Woman of Ur
was published, first with the small publishing house Hammarström&Åberg, later re-issued (30,000 copies) through the state-subsidized press for mass-circulation of quality literature: “En bok för alla. Litteraturfrämjandet”. (A book for Everybody. Promotion of Literature) and later re-issued in pocket-book format by Natur och Kultur. It is still in print.
“The Last woman from Ur “is a fictionalized and lyrical account of biblical Sarah, focusing on the theme of infertility and why it is so prevalent in the early Biblical mythology.
Our Biblical Mothers
a non-fiction work is a profoundly researched feminist analysis of the depiction and role of women in the Old Testament. It has become something of a classic in its genre in Sweden and is still included in educational curricula and still for sale in bookstores in its pocket version.
English 1988 “Behold, the Lord hath restrained me from bearing”, was published in Reproductive and Genetic Engineering, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 275-279.
Emma Goldman: Dancing Agitator
is a collection of the great anarchist agitator Emma Goldman’s writings. I edited, selected the texts, translated from English and wrote the preface.
Everything Now!
is my debut novel. It is a very personal and fierce and funny account on how we live—or fail to live—our ideologies in our private lives. On collective living, free sexuality and radical transformation of society, based on my experiences with The Living Theatre. (The book achieved something close to cult status among young women of the post ‘68 generation.)