Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Maya Kaganskaya

Dear friends,

Thank you very much for your support in this difficult hour. As you know, my mother, writer and literary critic Maya Kaganskaya passed away on Saturday, April 16. Her untimely death is a heavy loss to our family, to her many friends and admirers, and to the world of the Israeli letters.

My mother was a true intellectual who faced life and death with the indomitable courage of clear thought. She fought the evil empire of the USSR and she fought for her beliefs in her adopted country of Israel. Her words were her weapons and she proved daily that the pen is mightier than the sword and that lies, obfuscations and repression will not withstand the light of reason and truth.

She was the best mother a daughter could wish for; the best mentor an intellectual could desire. She never succumbed to the false consolations of religion and ideology but stood up to powers-that-be and spoke the truth as she knew it. She was an example of integrity not only to her family and friends but also to her many readers. She is gone but her voice still speaks to us through her writing, urging us “to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield”.

We mourn her passing and remember her as she was: a writer, a charismatic speaker, an officer’s daughter, and a loving mother and grandmother. The world will never be the same without her.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

This being a literature blog...

Let's start with the classic icebreaker: what are you currently reading?

I just finished the last novel in Timothy Zahn's Conquerors trilogy - classic SF with some excellent plotting, though the ending falls completely flat - and next up is Virtual Justice: The New Laws of Online Worlds by Greg Lastowka.