Empire’s Zeeva Bukai Explores Identity, Displacement, and Compassion in Debut Novel

(SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY — April 28, 2025) Writing has long been a part of Zeeva Bukai’s life. As a teenager, the author—who immigrated from Israel to New York around the age of four—began penning the short stories and poems she’d continue to create both during and after her graduate studies in fiction writing. Now, Bukai, assistant director of academic support at Empire State University, adds a new artform to her literary repertoire: a novel, published by Delphinium Books in January. Her debut work “The Anatomy of Exile” tells the story of Tamar Abadi, the matriarch of a Jewish Israeli family dealing with the fallout of a tragic romance between her sister-in-law and a Palestinian man amidst the 1967 Six Day War. In mourning, Tamar and her family leave their home behind to build a new life in the U.S., where—much to the protagonist’s dismay—Tamar’s daughter soon falls in love with a Palestinian neighbor. Over the course of 312 pages, readers follow along as Tamar tries to protect her child—and struggles with identity, displacement, and learning to embrace those who are different in the process.

What inspired you to tell this story, and what was your writing process like?
ZB: Basically, I wanted to write a story that dealt with a young Israeli girl who falls in love with a Palestinian boy. So, it began with that “Romeo and Juliet” trope. I wanted to see what that would be like for the parents and to base it here in the United States, not in Israel. [The idea was to] keep it away from the conflict zone and see whether that conflict translates into another land. I started there, and then I felt that the daughter’s point of view was too narrow somehow. So I began writing alternate chapters between the mother and the daughter. Finally, a friend said to me that she found the mother much more compelling and thought that it was the mother’s story—not the daughter’s. At first I [thought], no, I don’t want to do that because I’d written so much from the daughter’s point of view. But that part of the story informed the rest of the story, and nothing really goes to waste. So at that point, I really began going strong with Tamar’s point of view.

How long did you work on this story before it was published?
ZB: It took me 10 years to write the book because I was learning how to write a novel. I have an MFA in fiction writing, but up until then I’d been writing short stories. I had never written anything longer, but I really wanted a story that was going to propel forward. It took me time to learn how to do it. There were things that I had to move around, and I did a lot of cutting, a lot of editing, and a lot of tightening all the way up until the very end before we submitted the book for print. But I love the editing process—that’s my favorite. That first draft is murder because you’re trying to figure things out. That’s the part that takes me the longest. Also, I edit as I go, which is another reason why it takes so long.

Do you write every day?
ZB: I try to. I’m not writing as much as I would like, but I really try to get to what I’m working on every single day. Even if it’s just for 15 minutes, I feel like I need to touch base with it so I’m still in the mindset of the story. I don’t feel well when I don’t write. I feel out of sorts and not connected to myself. Writing is how I process the world.

You’ve said in other interviews that this book is not meant to be autobiographical, but there are some elements that stem from things you have personal experience with, like being an immigrant. How has writing the book impacted how you think about or relate to your own history?
ZB: That’s a really good question. I think it has made me look at my own history in a different way. After writing the book, I realized how many things from my family history were actually in the book—not the characters or what happened to them necessarily, although aspects of what happened to my father, who was born in the Jewish quarter of Damascus, Syria, [were adapted]. Those things came into the novel kind of unconsciously.

When you started writing the book a decade ago, you didn’t know that a new conflict between Israel and Palestine would be playing out when the book finally hit shelves. Has this story taken on new meaning for you given what’s going on in the world right now?
ZB: Absolutely. I set out to write a story about a woman who can change, who is frightened at the beginning of the novel when she sees her daughter fall in love with a Palestinian boy. She’s terrified that history is going to repeat itself. But she learns to accept, to look at things with compassion, and to change her views. It takes a while to get there, and there’s a lot that happens in between that. But I am hopeful that readers come away feeling that there’s a possibility for change and that not everything is this rigid hatred on all sides—that compassion can change the world.

The book has been out now for a few months. How have readers responded so far?
ZB: Overall, the response has been positive, but I’m not sure that the readership is wide enough yet. I think there are people who are fatigued by what’s happening in the Middle East and might look at my book and say, “I don’t want to read about that.” But Kirkus Reviews said that it was “a book to read right now” because it gives us a different perspective. I’m hoping that all readers feel that way. A segment of the Jewish world has embraced it, but there is also a part of that world that feels like I didn’t write about Jewish victimhood enough. Then there are others who feel I didn’t write about Palestinian victimhood enough. But I didn’t want to make anybody a victim, and I didn’t want to make anybody a hero. There are enough victims on both sides and, I imagine, enough heroes on both sides. I tried my best to write a balanced story—a human story about a woman who’s struggling with her own identity and her place in the world.

Has your wish for what a reader will take from the story changed at all since you first imagined it?
ZB: No, I don’t think so. Even 10 years ago as I was writing the book, I kept thinking, “You are insane. Why are you writing about this subject?” And yet it was a book that I felt compelled to write because I wanted to understand it. I wanted to understand how the acrimony, the brutality, the tribalism could be different. That was my big question to myself. I’m hoping that my book lets people know that as long as we can imagine it, it isn’t a dream; as long as we think there’s another way to be then there’s hope.

Let’s talk about what’s next for you. What are you working on now?
ZB: I’m working on a collection of short stories, and I have another book—a novella—coming out with Delphinium next February. The kinds of stories that I’m telling now all have to do with second generation trauma and children who go through war. I’m also still dealing with things like identity loss and grief. Those are universal topics, and they always seem to find their way into my work