Dolly City by Orly Castel-Bloom

Dolly City

Orly Castel-Bloom

A black satire about the Yiddisha-mamma complex and present day Israel. Both are shown as self-destructive and indestructible. The humour requires a strong stomach and the story is full of surreal images.

Extract
There was no alternative: I injected myself with a sedative and I calmed down, and for the time being the infant's life was spared.

I tried to get my mother on the phone, but the line was engaged. When I was a child, this woman told me about a mother who had put her baby in the washing machine and switched it on, and the baby died, and the judge sentenced her to life plus hard labour in the prison laundry- as a laundress. So deeply did my mother imprint this story in my mind that even now, when I put the baby's clothes into the washing machine, I imagined seeing the baby there too, and I fainted.

Parallels
  • 1984 by George Orwell
  • The Trial by Franz Kafka