"Toward Babel might not have found an English publisher had Shmueli not published her correspondence with the world-famous Celan—that would have been a loss: like him, she wrote in the language of her youth that she no longer spoke regularly. This may be one reason her work is so haunting, giving us evocative and poignant glimpses into one who, like Celan, a Jew driven from her home-language, was never able to leave the past and wholly settle into a land and language that was freely offered to her."—Jewish Book Council
