Fantastic Metropolis

Nothing too challenging, then. I started off in good spirits, translating my grandfather’s published memoirs and handwritten diaries and accumulating a thick file of research notes, and when I hadn’t finished the book after six months (most of my juvenile novels had taken no longer than that) I began to feel rather downcast. A couple of years later I took some time out from the novel and wrote a children’s book, which I still intend to publish some day. I persevered, writing hundreds of pages by hand (in those days I didn’t have a word processor) and literally cutting and pasting with scissors and glue.

After four years I took some more time out to have a bit of a nervous breakdown and wrote another unpublished novel which I also intend to rework and publish eventually. Eight years into the writing I became so fascinated by the stories of the ten lost tribes that I was researching for the novel that I broke off and wrote a whole book inspired by those—my Tales of the Ten Lost Tribes. The story “Ephraim” in there, about the young man who obsessively writes and rewrites the slim volume he can never finish, is pretty descriptive of my own tormented obsession with Genizah.

All this time I was writing and publishing short stories. It was a great relief to turn away, for a few months at a time, and work on something less gargantuan and stressful. In this way I gradually built up the collection Kafka in Brontëland. It’s true to say, therefore, that in a sense all three books were written simultaneously, and that psychically and emotionally they all came from the same place. Anyone who reads all three will recognise that.

In the spring of 2001 I finished Genizah. I acquired an agent who sent it all round the London publishers without success. Six months of rewrites followed. Then it went all round the London publishers again. It got a lot of praise, but no contract. I then took it upon myself to send it out to various smaller independent publishers, both here and in the States. Meanwhile I got down to work on a new novel.

One morning in September 2003 I went to the hospital for the results of a scan and as I was sitting in the consultant’s office it gradually dawned on me that she was telling me I might have cancer. Next thing I knew I had my head between my knees… That afternoon I went home and opened up my email and there was a message from The Toby Press asking if the rights were still available.

Fortunately I didn’t have cancer—which meant that I lived to perform a final rewrite on The Genizah at the House of Shepher. It’s due to appear in March 2005, exactly fifteen years after I first wrote the opening sentences. I should add that I would never have reached that point without the stalwart support of my friends and of my wonderful, longsuffering husband.

An excerpt from Tamar Yellin’s The Genizah at the House of Shepher can be read right here at Fantastic Metropolis. Her stories “Kafka in Brontëland” and “Waiting for Rain” are also available for perusal at the site.