Talks & Entertainment

My Russian Grandmother and Her American Vacuum Cleaner: A Family Memoir is a lighthearted tale of family ties, over-the-top housekeeping, and the sport of storytelling in the village of Shalev’s birth, where his Grandma Tonia wrestles with the family’s biggest enemy in their adoptive land: dirt.

Tonia, who came to Palestine from Russia in 1923, was never seen without a cleaning rag over her shoulder. She received visitors outdoors. Tonia and her regulations come to life in a narrative that centers around the arrival of a vacuum sent as a gift.

The fate of the “svieeperrr” is a family mystery that Shalev—one of Israel’s most celebrated novelists—explores in this memoir about the pioneers who gave his childhood its spirit of wonder and the grit and humor of people building new lives.