Yehudit Hendel is one of a group of Israeli women writers who made their names known on that coun-try's literary landscape in the 1960s and 1970s. Up until that time, men had dominated the Israeli fiction world, and the work of the few women authors had been available only in Hebrew. This group, which included other Israeli women authors such as Shulamith Hareven and Amalia Kahana-Carmon, expanded its readership by appearing in translation and set the tone for fiction written by women by giving its female characters strong, assertive roles and voices.

Small Change is a dark and disturbing novella about an Israeli woman and her struggle with her domineering father and her harrowing experience in a Swiss jail. Rutchen finds herself in prison for illegally exchanging the coins her father has obsessively collected over the years. As she tells her story to a neighborhood friend, the extent of her trauma—not only from her prison experience but from her dysfunctional family life—becomes painfully clear. Hendel sketches Rutchen's story in an impressionist style; the actual events are, according to various critics, of less importance than the feelings and emotions attached to them.