Her first novel, Love Life, published in 1997 is already a feature film in Germany and has been translated in over 30 languages worldwide including Malayalam. It’s the story of a stormy relationship between a young woman Ya’arah and a man twice her age, her father’s erstwhile friend and peer, Aryeh.

“I like to deal with crisis instead of peaceful routines. Conflicts interest me, as they’re the only way to realise the truth,” says Shalev. While her writing style is extremely lyrical, she doesn’t like to write about the political issues of Israel at all. “If anyone wants to know about them, they only have to look at the newspapers. My writings show the intensity and the existence of the Israeli people, but only in an indirect way,” insists Shalev, who wrote her first poem at the age of six.

While Love Life took two years to complete, Shalev’s subsequent books, Husband and Wife and Late Family took three and five years respectively. Late Family took longer because of the serious injuries she suffered when a bus was blown up right next to the footpath she was walking on in Jerusalem in 2004 in a suicide bombing case. Her name Zeruya according to the Bible means ‘God will take care of her’, and indeed it seems to have come true for her. “Those were dark days and we never felt protected. It was a struggle to remain optimistic,” says Shalev.