The World Between

Reviews / Votes

"Bukai's lyrical prose shines again in her newest work, The World Between, [a] story that. . . evokes tensions between spouses, homelands and shifting times."-Hadassah Magazine

"Powerful sensory images. A brief beguiling plunge into a woman's consciousness."-Kirkus Reviews

"Zeeva Bukai's The World Between gives us the long life of an actress in the fading world of Yiddish theatre. From a wartime childhood in a Siberian camp, to a tempestuous marriage in post-war New York, to sorrow and decline in later Israel, an unforgettable character leads us through a page-turner of a story with history at its heart."- Joan Silber, author of Improvement and Secrets of Happiness. "Bukai deliv-ers as splen-did an orches-tra-tion of life as one might usu-al-ly antic-i-pate from a much longer nov-el, so filled is it with notes of long-ing, melan-choly, bit-ter-ness, resound-ing love, and fleet-ing joys. The author has said that the dev-as-tat-ing sense of loss after her mother's death inspired her to write a kind of homage, and it is hard to imag-ine moth-ers and daugh-ters?-?or indeed any read-er, not cel-e-brat-ing the result. And this is a con-sis-tent-ly evoca-tive work; the var-i-ous eras the nar-ra-tor revis-its are vivid-ly, lov-ing-ly curat-ed, illu-mi-nat-ed with a gen-uine sense of authen-tic-i-ty. The World Between is a shat-ter-ing, heart-felt, and exu-ber-ant achievement."-Jewish Book Council


"The World Between is a beautiful rendition of life as art, and art as life, in the portrait of one woman's struggles through what has been called the Century of Wars, but should be called the century of suffering. 'Fiction is art,' John Cheever said, 'and Art is the triumph over chaos, no less.' This book is a triumph."- Richard Bausch, author of Peace, and The Fate of Others: Stories.

"Zeeva Bukai's stunning novel takes place nischt ahn, nischt aher, where memory and damage conjoin and there are no solutions. Bukai's luminous prose heals even as it wounds, and I was utterly entranced by her wisdom and masterful approach to trauma. The World Between should be required reading for anyone seeking understanding of the Holocaust, survival, and the profound impact of both."-Erika Krouse, author of Save Me, Stranger

"The World Between is fragile. It's mysterious. It's wonderfully written. Zeeva Bukai has created characters who breathe with weighty, tragic experience."-Max Gross, author of The Lost Shtetl



"Original, compelling, emotionally engaging... Author Zeeva Bukai's character-and-narrative-driven storytelling style raises her novel to an impressive level of literary excellence."-Midwest Book Review