In our global village, a great many of us have found ourselves in liminal states between cultures, countries, languages, and selves—whether in travel or in daily life. As the world becomes seemingly smaller, however, our internal universes have continued to expand and multiply, as demonstrated in Dana Shem-Ur’s penetrating and incisive novel, Where I Am—our Book Club selection for the month of June. Portraying the conflicts and multitudes of a woman inhabiting the very definition of a cosmopolitan life, Shem-Ur brilliantly encapsulates the alienations that pervade contemporary existence, tracing all the detritus of when an individual collides with place.
The Asymptote Book Club aspires to bring the best in translated fiction every month to readers around the world. You can sign up to receive next month’s selection on our website for as little as USD20 per book; once you’re a member, join our Facebook group for exclusive book club discussions and receive invitations to our members-only Zoom interviews with the author or the translator of each title.
Where I Am by Dana Shem-Ur, translated from the Hebrew by Yardenne Greenspan, New Vessel, 2023
In the world of literature, the question of one’s own “where” takes on new dimensions. “Where” dances sinuously with class, language, education, climate, religion, politics, and more, each amorphous construct reinforcing and transforming the others, driving back the question of origin into the unknowable. The concept of “where I am” is dictated not only by the objective latitudes and longitudes of geography, but also by the subjective constructs that layer over each other—over “me” and “you.” Reut, the protagonist of Dana Shem-Ur’s Where I Am, translated from the Hebrew by Yardenne Greenspan, embodies this dance even more strongly in her position as a foreign resident and translator, amidst the confusingly cosmopolitan yet prescriptive Paris literary scene.
