SAN DIEGO (SDJW) — A few years ago, with the help of her son, an expert in the field, our Israeli correspondent Dorothea Shefer-Vanson recorded the ten chapters of her first novel, The Balancing Game; A Child Between Two Worlds, A Society Facing War, which she published as an ebook and a paperback in 2012. Her attempt to produce it as an audiobook did not succeed, and she gave up the project.
A few weeks ago, Dorothea received at her home office in Mevasseret Zion, Israel, an email from ‘Customer Support’ of KDP, the arm of Amazon which publishes books, telling her that she had been selected to produce the audiobook version of her books using virtual voice narration. She proceeded to follow the relatively simple instructions and could choose whether to use a male or female voice and an American or British accent. Dorothea chose the feminine British voice, as this was the closest to her own. When she listened to the result it sounded as authentic as her voice, and so she went ahead and converted all eight of her novels into audiobooks.
They are all now available on Amazon and Audible, for a modest fee, and San Diego Jewish World is proud to attach below a list of all her novels, and hope that someone out there will be interested in listening to some of them.
Dorothea’s books (all available on Amazon as ebooks, paperbacks and audiobooks):
- The Balancing Game; a Child Between Two Worlds, a Society Approaching War, the life of a Jewish child growing up in postwar London and that of a young woman in Jerusalem in the period prior to and during the Six-Day War (published in 2013 by SBPRA).
- Time Out of Joint; the Fate of a Family, events in Germany and Europe between 1924 and 1942 as they affect a Jewish family (published in 2014 by ebookpro).
- Levi Koenig; a Contemporary King Lear, the life of an elderly man, his three daughters and his Philippina helper in modern Jerusalem as his life draws to a close (published in 2015 by ebookpro).
- Chasing Dreams and Flies; a Tragicomedy of Life in France, the experiences of an English couple as they retire to the French countryside without knowing much about France or the French (published in 2016 by KDP).
- All Quiet on the Midwestern Plains; a Tale of Deception, Betrayal and Vindication, what happens to an Israeli family spending a year at a university in the Mid-West of the USA in the 1980s. The events include encounters with the local Jewish and non-Jewish communities and with the American Nazi party, whose headquarters are there (published in 2018 by KDP).
- A Ruffled Calm, an eccentric visitor intrudes on a family, bringing an ostensibly normal mother of three to the brink of insanity (published in 2019 by KDP).
- Friends, Neighbors, Traitors, the lives and interactions of three women and one husband in Jerusalem at the time of the fighting in Lebanon (published in 2020 by KDP).
- Rootless in Zion. life in Jerusalem and the university there in 1965 as experienced by three graduate students from English-speaking countries. The political situation, mutual exploitation and the nuances of academic life are reflected in the events of the year before the Six-Day War, when everything changed (published in 2021 by KDP).
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San Diego Jewish World staff report.