ITHACA, N.Y. -- Acclaimed contemporary Israeli novelist Ronit Matalon will read from her work Sunday, Feb. 22, at Tompkins County Library and will be at Cornell University Monday, Feb. 23, to deliver a talk, "Writing, Desire and Two Billion Hungry People." Both events are free and open to the public. The Feb. 22 reading is at 2:30 p.m. in the library's Borg Warner Room. The Feb. 23 talk at Cornell is at 4:30 p.m. in White Hall, Room 106.

"Ronit's visit offers the Cornell community a window onto the vibrancy of Israeli literature and culture," said Deborah Starr, an assistant professor in Near Eastern studies. "Her talk will also offer insights into the role of public intellectuals in Israeli society."

The novelist is one of a group of young Israeli writers who are exploring through fiction some of the issues confronting their country and the Middle East today, said Starr. Matalon's most-recent novel, Bliss (English translation, Henry Holt, 2003), was a best-seller in Israel. The book artfully explores the friendship of two women, one burning with a sense of national guilt about her country's treatment of the Palestinians, the other experiencing life vicariously through her friend. "One of Matalon's many achievements is to twist a steely link between Israel's two pains: those it inflicts and those it suffers," wrote Richard Eder in The New York Times .

Matalon's highly praised first novel, The One Facing Us (English translation, Henry Holt, 1998), centers on a young woman who reconstructs the past lives of her Egyptian-Jewish family using scraps of letters and old photos. The New York Times called the book "haunting" and wrote: "Matalon makes a strong case for the necessity of unearthing the past."

Born in 1959, the daughter of Egyptian-Jewish immigrants to Israel, Matalon studied literature and philosophy at Tel Aviv University and worked as a journalist for Ha'aretz newspaper, where she covered Gaza and the West Bank during the 1987-93 Intifada.

Also on Feb. 23, Matalon will join students and faculty for lunch at noon at the Near Eastern Studies table in Risley Hall dining room and will be a guest speaker in Starr's course The Jews In and Out of Egypt. Her visit is co-sponsored by Cornell's Department of Near Eastern Studies, Jewish Studies Program and Society for the Humanities. Jewish Studies is also a co-sponsor of the Feb. 22 reading.