ten thousand lovers

The shorlist for the Governor-General’s Award has been announced, and beside the expected vets (Margaret Atwood for Oryx and Crake) and some quirky choices (Elizabeth Hay’s Garbo Laughs, Douglas Glover’s Elle, and Jean McNeil’s Private View), the surprise nominee is Edeet Ravel, an Israeli-Canadian writer whose first published novel Ten Thousand Lovers is “a tale of love and terrorism set in Israel in the 1970s.” Ravel is described as a woman who spends a portion of her time each year thinking of practical ways to promote peace between Palestinians and Israelis.