You're listening to a podcast from the BBC World Service.

This is Hard Talk with me, Stephen Sacker.

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Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker.

My guest today is an internationally successful Israeli novelist who combines her writing with continued practice as a clinical psychologist.

Ayelet Gunda Goshen's fascination with human motivation, the reasons why we do what we do, drives her compelling stories.

They're full of moral ambiguity, and they confront some of the most challenging

and sensitive issues in Israeli society today. Though she avoids overt politics, her work paints

a telling portrait of a young country rarely far from the international news headlines. So what does

she mean when she says Israel is a country still

exhibiting the symptoms of post-traumatic stress? Well, Ayelet Gunda Goshen joins me now. Welcome to

Hard Talk. You're a trained clinical psychologist. You're also a novelist. Which comes first for you, which feels like it matters most?

I feel very passionate about both of them, and I feel that they're both driving or originated from

the same place. It's the place where instead of judging, you try to understand. I feel both as a

psychologist and as an author, when you see something that you

would usually just judge as a bad thing to do instead of rushing into judgment, you always have to

ask yourself, could I, under any circumstances, be doing this thing that when I look from the

outside perspective, seems so wrong? That is interesting because it's searching for the nuance for a deeper

understanding of actions and events. It seems to me that may be difficult in a country Israel,

which I know from personal experience is such a very intense place where people, in a sense, always feel there are existential questions and there

are always sides to be taken, our side, their side, good against bad. Is it a tough place

...