MATALON, RONIT

MATALON, RONIT (1959– ), Israeli writer. Born to Egyptian-Jewish parents in a new immigrant town near Tel Aviv, Matalon later studied literature and philosophy at Tel Aviv University. She worked as a journalist at Israeli Television and the daily Haaretz. Matalon was a member of staff at the Camera Obscura School of Arts in Tel Aviv. Her first publication was a book for children, Sippur she-Matḥil be-Levayah shel Naḥash ("A Story Which Begins with a Snake's Funeral," German 1999). Following her first collection of stories, Zarim ba-Bayit ("Strangers in the House," 1992), she published her novel Ze im ha-Panim Elenu ("The One Facing Us," 1998), a complex, post-modernistic family saga, coalescing text and photo material, foregrounding feminine as well as ethnic concerns. Her second novel Sarah Sarah was translated into English in 2003. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: L. Rattok, "My Gaze Was All I Had: The Problem of Representation in the Works of Ronit Matalon," in: Israel Social Science Research, 12, 1 (1997), 44–55; D. Abramovich, "Reviving the Israeli Roots Novel," in: Australian Journal of Jewish Studies, 15 (2001), 89–103; idem, "Ronit Matalon's Ethnic Masterpiece," in: Women in Judaism, 3:2 (2003). (Anat Feinberg (2nd ed.)