“Everyone needs a pink balloon.”

The pink balloon is a meditation technique Lily’s father taught her as a child, and is the only constant in her life, helping her to navigate between her assumed identities and new names, as she moves to different continents, cultures, and religions.

Lily is born in Venice Beach, California to a Palestinian mother, Minna, and an Israeli father, David. When her parents separate, Minna and Lily go to live with her mother’s family in a conservative Palestinian refugee community, where she becomes Lila and is raised as a Muslim. After Minna dies, David takes her to Israel, where he has built himself a new life in an illegal settlement in the West Bank. Here, she becomes Lia and converts to Judaism.

After she discovers she is expected to get married—an arranged marriage if necessary—Lia runs away to India, the place where she feels her parents’ story, and her own, really began. She creates her own identity and calls herself Leela as she embarks on a journey of discovery, bent on finally finding out who she truly is.

As she sheds her old identities to rebuild herself as Leela, the pink balloon takes on a life of its own, guiding her from place to place and from revelation to revelation.

As I child, I devoured Enid Blyton’s Secret Seven and The Famous Five. I loved the adventure and the excitement of the mystery but, most of all, I loved Blyton’s descriptions of the food: lashings of jam and cream and buckets of ginger beer. So, for me, reading The Pink Balloon and its evocative descriptions of traditional Jewish and Arabic foods I was almost transported to the colourful days of my childhood reading. This is a beautifully written novel that leaves the reader captivated with its powerful multi-sensory description. It also makes you hungry!

Lily is a small child living an idyllic, if unconventional, childhood with her parents in the US. We slowly discover that her mother has Arabic heritage and her father is from a Jewish background but love has overcome. Until it doesn’t anymore and Lily becomes Lila and returns to her maternal family in Laurel Valley. Here we see the first of Lily’s life struggles: who is she and how does she fit into the world she now encounters?

The story centres around family and celebrations with food as a central theme as the smells and sights of the kitchen and dining table are brought to life for the reader. And when tragedy strikes and Lila becomes Lia, we find ourselves in a new community, following new rules but also sharing wonderful meals together.

Aside from food, the central image of Lily’s pink balloon guides us on her adventures. A strong meditative tool, Lily first imagines the balloon as a protective bubble around her throughout her formative years before it develops into a compass to guide her travels as she heads into adulthood. As she moves from the US to Israel and then onto India, the Pink Balloon guides Lily as she sets out on her quest to discover her true self.

The novel is hugely engaging and as a coming-of-age story I was really rooting for Lily to find her inner peace. Her life is also enriched by the excellent characterisation of her friends and family with her Aunt Hana and Jonathan being standout characters, perfect foils for Lily’s strong sense of independence. The dialogue throughout the text is well done, especially in the character of Lily’s maternal grandmother – you can so easily imagine the tone your own grandmother might use. Throughout the author really explores family dynamics in a way that will resonate with every reader.

The story also cleverly navigates the Palestine-Israeli tensions and, through Lily’s young eyes, the reader gains a greater sense of the families and communities torn apart by the ongoing conflict. As we travel to India with Lily we also get to appreciate a sense of the wider world and the power of adventure and exploration and this section interweaves ideas about Buddhism, yoga and meditation that are fascinating.

In reading The Pink Balloon I felt as though I too had floated away from the present to the worlds Lily described and it felt such a shame to have to bump back to reality.

Born in Israel, I lived in South Africa as a child, so English is my native language. Later I spent a few years in New York doing my M.A.

Education: MA-TESOL, PHD-Comparative Literature. My thesis was on Metafiction in the Writings of Virginia Woolf and Marguerite Duras.

Employment: I worked as a journalist, translator and editor for a few years and then taught English at Tel Aviv University for almost twenty years. I left to write full time.

Publications: Three former novels have been published in Israel by small publishers.

The Pink Balloon is the result of a lengthy spiritual journey and is the first book I’ve written in English.