Skip to main content
Trade Books For Courses Tradebooks for Courses

The Red Tent - 20th Anniversary Edition

A Novel

Anita Diamant

St. Martin's Paperbacks

opens in a new window
opens in a new window The Red Tent - 20th Anniversary Edition Download image

ISBN10: 1250067995
ISBN13: 9781250067999

Mass Market Paperbound

416 Pages

$12.99

CA$16.99

Request Desk Copy
Request Exam Copy

TRADE BOOKS FOR COURSES NEWSLETTER

Sign up to receive information about new books, author events, and special offers.

Sign up now

Her name is Dinah. In the Bible, her life is only hinted at in a brief and violent detour within the more familiar chapters of the Book of Genesis that are about her father, Jacob, and his dozen sons. Told in Dinah's voice, this novel reveals the traditions and turmoils of ancient womanhood—the world of the red tent. It begins with the story of her mothers—Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah—the four wives of Jacob. They love Dinah and give her gifts that sustain her through a hard-working youth, a calling to midwifery, and a new home in a foreign land. Dinah's story reaches out from a remarkable period of early history and creates an intimate connection with the past. Deeply affecting, The Red Tent combines rich storytelling with a valuable achievement in modern fiction: a new view of biblical women's society.

Reviews

Praise for The Red Tent - 20th Anniversary Edition

"Diamant vividly conjures up the ancient world of caravans, shepherds, farmers, midwives, slaves, and artisans . . . her Dinah is a compelling narrator that has timeless resonance."—Merle Rubin, The Christian Science Monitor

"An intense, vivid novel . . . It is tempting to say that The Red Tent is what the Bible would be like if it had been written by women, but only Diamant could have given it such sweep and grace."—The Boston Globe

"The best fiction reporters create a world and bathe us in its sounds and sights, its language and climate, the intricate relationships among its inhabitants. Anita Diamant has performed this wondrous craft: She has brought forth one of those books that appear effortless precisely because the writer has pondered even the length of breath between each character's words . . . This earthy, passionate tale, told also with great delicacy, is, quite simply, a great read."—Jane Redmont, National Catholic Reporter

"By giving a voice to Dinah, one of the silent female characters in Genesis, the novel has struck a chord with women who may have felt left out of biblical history. It celebrates mothers and daughters and the mysteries of the life cycle."—Los Angeles Times

"A richly imagined world . . . Paints a vivid picture of what women's society might have resembled during biblical times. Although it is a novel, it is also an extended midrash or exegesis—filling in gaps left by the biblical text."—Jewish Times

"[A] vivid evocation of the world of Old Testament women . . . The red tent becomes a symbol of womanly strength, love, and wisdom . . . Diamant succeeds admirably in depicting the lives of women in the age that engendered our civilization and our most enduring values."—Publishers Weekly

"The oldest story of all could never seem more original, more true."—James Carroll, author of An American Requiem

Reviews from Goodreads

BOOK EXCERPTS

Read an Excerpt

THE RED TENT (Chapter 1)
Their stories began with the day that my father appeared. Rachel came running into camp, knees flying, bellowing like a calf separated from its mother. But before anyone could scold her for acting like a wild boy, she...

Listen to an Excerpt from the Audiobook

Download MP3

About the author

Anita Diamant

Anita Diamant is the author of The Red Tent, a word-of-mouth bestseller and the Booksense Best Fiction selection. She is also the author of the novels Good Harbor, The Last Days of Dogtown and Day After Night, a collection of essays, Pitching My Tent, as well as several books about contemporary Jewish life, including The New Jewish Wedding and Choosing a Jewish Life: A Guidebook for People Converting to Judaism. Diamant grew up in Newark, New Jersey, and Denver, Colorado. She has a bachelor’s degree from Washington University in St. Louis and a master’s in English from the State University of New York at Binghamton. She lives in Massachusetts with her husband.

Gretje Ferguson