Creator Bio
Jacqueline Shohet Kahanoff
1917–1979
Jacqueline Kahanoff (born Shohet) was an Egyptian-born novelist, essayist, and journalist. She was born in Cairo to a Tunisian mother and an Iraqi father who owned a department store. Kahanoff moved to the United States in 1940, earning a journalism degree from Columbia University. She published the novel Jacob’s Ladder in 1951, three years before she moved to Israel; in Israel she turned to essays and reflective writings. Her mainly English-language works (which were published in Hebrew translation in Israel) drew on her experiences in Egypt in the interwar period, and she is credited with the theory of Levantinism, envisioning multicultural societies in the Middle East.
Entries in the Posen Library by This Creator
Primary Source
A Culture Stillborn
It is possible to see the promise of a beginning of Levantine literature—rooted in the realities of the Middle East and influenced by European culture—in Le livre de Goha le Simple [Goha the Fool] by…
Primary Source
A Letter from Mama Camouna
Not long after Sammy’s visit, my father died after a long illness. My mother’s sorrow and mine were compounded by the fact that there were not ten men who had known him in his life to stand by his…