Her mother taught at Seminar Hakibbutzim and was often absent from home during the week, and Shabtai was very close to her father.
[3] Shabtai originally wrote the novel as a screenplay in 1986 and 1987, during the AIDS epidemic; it was published by Haim Pesach at Keter Press as a 600-page novel in 1997.
[5][6] Shabtai recalls friends telling her when the book was originally published that the subject matter was "hard to relate to".
"[3] In the spring of 2020, as the pandemic was causing lockdown worldwide, David Brin and Danny Bloom commented on the "renewed literery interest" in the novel.
[4] Mosaic reported that in July 2020 the book was being displayed in bookstore windows in Tel Aviv.