MRS. LILIENBLUM'S CLOUD FACTORY

A tragicomic novel about the pursuits and upheavals in an Israeli high-tech family.

Three days after Sarai Lilienblum, a high school robotics teacher, mysteriously disappears, her son Ilai receives a message: your mother was found, sunbathing in the middle of the desert, wearing a burgundy robe, with a martini in her hand. No one knows where she's been, and she refuses to say.

The confusion increases when a video from the three days of her absence pops up online. Sarai is in the desert testing an invention of hers, a device that turns sand into clouds at the touch of a button. The viral video leads to an offer from one of the world's most successful tech entrepreneurs -- $20 million if the cloud machine can make it rain.

From the remote town where she lives, Sarai founds a startup company that generates international interest after her video is seen around the world. If she succeeds, she will solve the global water crisis. If she fails, she'll have drained her family's bank accounts. Ilai is dragged into the venture together with his older sister, all the while trying to find out what really happened those three days his mother disappeared.

Mrs. Lilienblum's Cloud Factory is a funny, human and contemporary novel about the tech world and those who remain outside its gates, the polarization between rural and urban communities, the climate crisis and the "Startup Nation." It's a story about a woman who dares to challenge the social conventions that have stifled her dreams, and a son who does everything to keep his family from falling apart.

IDDO GEFEN is a cognitive psychology Ph.D. student at Columbia University and the Zuckerman Institute for Neuroscience. Gefen won the 2019 National Library of Israel Pardes Scholarship. His debut short story collection, "Jerusalem Beach" received the Israeli Minister of Culture's 2017 Award, and film and television rights to several stories have been optioned by leading Hollywood production companies, including by the actor Ryan Gosling.