Dina’s Braids

Shoshana Shababo was born in Zikhron Ya‘akov, the daughter of a teacher at the Alliance school in Safed. She studied at the Levinsky College in Tel Aviv, and at age twenty-two published a controversial two-volume novel, Maryah, depicting the lives of nuns and of an Arab family. Shababo was one of the first Sephardi women to publish novels in pre-state Israel; her short stories also appeared in numerous literary journals. After her marriage, she ceased her literary career.