Every House Needs a Balcony

“A captivating roman à clef.”

—Publishers Weekly

A child of Romanian immigrants, eight-year-old Rina lives with her family in the poverty-stricken heart of 1950s Haifa, Israel. She, her older sister, and their parents inhabit a cramped apartment with a narrow balcony that becomes an intimate shared stage on which the joys and dramas of the building’s daily life are played out. It is also a vantage point from which Rina witnesses the emergence of a strange new country, born from the ashes of World War II. Years later, after living abroad with her wealthy Spanish husband in Barcelona, Rina longs for the simple life she misses. Returning to the Haifa of her boisterous youth may soothe her soul, but it will ultimately endanger her marriage.

Beautifully told, filled with questions of identity, love, and survival, Every House Needs a Balcony is an unforgettable social and historical portrait of a neighborhood and a nation. Steeped in the colors and smells, laughter and tears, of Rina Frank’s own childhood memories, it is a heartbreaking tale about the deepest meanings of home.

“An unaffected, candid narrative....

Beyond the personal, Every House Needs a Balcony also reads as powerful social documentary of a bygone age.” —Jerusalem Post