Revital Shiri-Horowitz

I love that we, authors, share our work and knowledge with each other and with our readers.  Let me tell you about my book Daughters of Iraq, which was published in Hebrew four years ago, recently,translated to English, and published in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and several other countries. It is available in soft cover and in eBook form.

I was born and raised in Israel, but both my parents immigrated to Israel from Iraq. This month is my twenty year wedding anniversary to Amnon, my husband and we have four boys ages 18, 15, 12 and 8.  We also have a very sweet dog called Sheleg (the word "Sheleg" in Hebrew means snow). We share our lives between the Washington state and Israel. 

Daughters of Iraq is a novel, telling a fictional history story, rooted in my personal family history.The book is close to the Memoir genre. I started writing the book with a great passion to tell the story of my family, especially the story of the women in my family.

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My family lived in Iraq, which was Babylon, for many generations, and when Israel was established in 1948 most of the Jewish population immigrated to Israel. My family was among 150 thousand Jews who left Iraq. I wanted to tell their story because I felt that this part of world history, and especially Jewish women history, is not widely told or known.

My book tells the story of three sisters, and shifts in time and place between Israel and Iraq.  Three timelines are intertwined. 1941, when there was a pogrom in Bagdad on one weekend, and up to 1950 when most of our family left Iraq. From 1951 when my oldest uncle and my grandmother managed to escape, at the very last moment before my uncle, who was wanted by Iraqi authorities, for being active in the Jewish underground was captured until around 1983.With the last period occurring in the nineties.

When I write I never plan ahead. I just sit at my computer and write, and I feel that my characters are pulling my story out of me, like they have their own wishes. I remember that when I was close to finishing writing my book how sad I felt that I had to say goodbye to them. I felt like they were real people in my life, and now I had to let them go. People that read my book told me how human they felt they were. Readers laughed and cried, and felt like they can really connect to the character’s life and feelings. 

I love connecting with people, I love to hear people’s life story, and that gives me great pleasure lecturing about my book, everywhere. I go everywhere they invite me to lecture and tell the story of the book, because I think it is important to learn about different cultures, I love doing that myself. I think that when we learn about other cultures it helps us better understand people. I am a people person, I love talking to people, and think that each one of us has a fascinating life story I would like to learn about.  

I am currently working on a second novel, which I write in Hebrew, and am hoping to publish it in the spring. Please visit me at my Website.

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