On Saturday, December 7, 2024 Gabriella Goliger addressed the Media Club at the year end December meeting, held at the Lord Elgin Hotel.
Goliger told us that when she was a government freelance writer she wrote fiction in her spare time. After she retired she became a full-time writer.
Her first book, Song of Ascent, is a collection of short stories. The book was based on the lives of her parents, who journeyed to Palestine and then to Montreal. It won the 2001 Upper Canada Writers Craft Award.
Over the years Goliger has won numerous other awards for her writing. In 1995 she was a finalist for the Journey Prize and in 1997 she was co-winner of the same prize for her short story, Maladies of the Inner Ear.
She also received the City of Ottawa 2011 Literacy Award for Fiction for her second book, the novel, Girl Unwrapped. That book is a 1960s coming of age and coming out story based on her own life.
Goliger’s third book, published in 2018, is Eva Solomon’s War. This historical fiction novel is loosely based on the life of her aunt who never spoke much about her life and died at 48 years old. Goliger read us the prologue of that book, which is set in 1947.
In 1937, her aunt fled to Israel before Hitler came to power. While there she fell in love with a British Consulate Constable. He was possibly
a peacekeeper but he represented occupational power.
The Arabs didn’t want too many immigrants and they became aware that more and more were coming before the Hitler invasion. David Ben-Gurion was pragmatic and willing to compromise. The other extreme group wanted to use force.
It was a position of divided loyalties. There was brutal oppression and Goliger’s aunt suffered at the hands of her own people, the Jews.
It’s a complex story covering complex moral topics and history. Was it justified? She became an outsider among outsiders.
Goliger’s fourth book is close to being finished. Set in 1933 Berlin, its working title is Farewell to Lavender Nights.
At the end of Goliger’s talk she was asked how she researches her topics. To that she said, “The Palestine Post newspaper has archives going back to 1936. I also read a lot of history books and looked into the archives of Palestinian police. They are in the library in Oxford, England.”
You can buy Gabriella Goliger’s books directly from her (“I offer a good discount,” she said), from the publishers or from Amazon.