“In the place where a woman leaped off a roof, a bird flew”: Shimon Adaf’s NUNTIA and Ovid’s METAMORPHOSIS

• In Event: New Perspectives, Old Stories: Biblical and classical myth in Modern Hebrew literature

Abstract

Nuntia (2010), is Shimon Adaf’s novel, first in the Judea Rose trilogy. It is a complicated novel, combining many different genres such as, detective, children’s tale, science fiction and more. It has a few plots which are intertwined throughout the novel, and it is written in fragments which go back and forth between the different plots and between past, present, and future. It is mostly set in a futuristic Tel-Aviv, five hundred years from now, but it is also set in the fictitious southern town of “Mevo Yam”.
In my talk, I will discuss Adaf’s novel, in relation to the book of metamorphosis, written by Ovid. I will examine the meeting points between Nuntia and metamorphosis, and the way the metamorphic logic affects this complicated novel, and the connection between Doron Aflalo, the poet who tells the story in Nuntia, and Ovid himself.

Author

• Rina Jean Baroukh, Achva Academic College