"Although originally published separately, Modiano's three novellas form a single ... whole, haunted by the same gauzy sense of place and characters. Modiano draws on his own experiences, blended with the real or invented stories of others, to present a dreamlike autobiography that is also the biography of a place. Orphaned children, mysterious parents, forgotten friends, enigmatic strangers--each appears in this three-part love song to a Paris that no longer exists"--OCLC

"Israeli writer Shaham explores the beams and pilings of a special mode of Zionist life--that of the kibbutz--and, especially in the first and third novellas here, lays out the psychologies of some of the pioneers with almost case-file (if undramatic) precision. In "S/S Cairo City," a delegate to a 1939 Geneva Zionist convention writes a series of letters to a lover, another delegate, who has left (disastrously) to return to Poland. As Hitler throws shadows which many of the Zionists are not yet ready to accept, they are nevertheless grateful to jam aboard a Palestine-bound Egyptian ship out of Marseilles; on the ship, Shaham probes the skepticisms of men-ideologues being turned into plain victims by what they're fleeing. ("Kuperberg spoke about the congress. He was not at all impressed with certain speeches that I found deeply moving. He said Zionism tends to be like manna. It gives the Western Jew a taste of Yiddishkeit, while to the Eastern Jew it holds forth a promise of Europe.") The last novella--"The Salt of the Earth"--is about an old kibbutznik's first trip to America--and seems like an ironic variation on the opening story; New York literally kills, the old man, hostile to every vision of social life for which he's striven back at home (and knows he's losing there, too). And the central, title novella is where Shaham shows his hand at deeper narrative: a bookish young kibbutz woman becomes erotic guardian over her married neighbor's clandestine love life--as the situation of universal daily sharing builds up such an edifice of public virtue that private weakness becomes downfall, destruction. Like Amos Oz, whose subject matter is similar, Shaham is delicate, historical, unillusioned, undogmatic; Oz's poetry is lacking here, but Shaham may have the edge in social perspicacity."-- Kirkus

Set in the early 1900s, Viennese Romance tells the story of Michael Rost, an eighteen-year-old Jewish youth who travels to Vienna, hungry for experience. There, he forms passing relationships with everyone who crosses his path - prostitutes, revolutionaries, paupers, army officers, and rich men alike. With a foreword that explains how this lost novel came to light, Viennese Romance is a seminal work that explores the conflicts faced by many Jewish intellectuals in early-twentieth-century Europe. A compelling portrait of a decadent society, it also lays bare the obsessive-destructive nature of love.

A new translation of Giorgio Bassani's award winning collection of novellas, which inspired his masterpiece The Garden of the Finzi-Continis. A young working class woman abandoned by her bourgeois lover; the tensions of intermarriage between established classes and communities; a holocaust survivor seemingly back from the dead; a formidable socialist activist defying house arrest; the only surviving witness to the first local atrocity of the Second World War. In these five unforgettable stories, Bassani gave life to the characters that would inform the Romanzo di Ferrara, his suite of novels depicting life in the city. Moving, poetic, atmospheric and artfully observed, this collection is a distillation of Bassani's genius. It won the Strega Prize on first publication as Cinque Storie Ferraresi in 1956, and established Bassani as one of the greatest Italian writers of the twentieth century. 'Giorgio Bassani is one of the great witnesses of this century, and one of its great artists' Guardian 'The most uncompromising, merciful and merciless writer' Ali Smith

In the year 1930, three farmers committed suicide here . . . but contrary to the chronicles of our committee and the conclusions of the British policeman, the people of the moshava knew that only two of the suicides had actually taken their own lives, whereas the third suicide had been murdered." This is the contention of Ruta Tavori, a high school teacher and independent thinker in this small farming community, writing seventy years later about that murder and about two charismatic men she loves and is trying to forgive--her grandfather and her husband--and her son, whom she mourns and misses.

When a young girl loses her parents and comes to live as a maid at the home of her wealthy relatives, she triggers a complex series of events in the life of Hirshl Hurvitz, her young cousin, who falls in love with her

It is set in the summer of 1931, when twenty-year-old Nora Krieger returns to her small-town home in Lithuania from university in Berlin ready to present her new, mature self. Instead, her time at home becomes a period of unrequited love, difficult memories and introspection. Hopeful that her long wallks and intellectual banter with Albert Arin will lead to romance. Nora must abandon the notion when she discovers Arin's affair with his daughter's friend. Determined to come to terms with her relationship with her father, who was driven to madness after being tortured in the First World War, Nora must confront her own fear of losing her sanity. Young, educated and Jewish, she must accept the limits imposed on her by a class-conscious, increasingly anti-Semitic society.

A married, aristocratic young Russian Jew wanders in atonement for sin after falling in love with the wife of his father-in-law, an Austrian rabbi

Each bilingual volume in The Defiant Muse series includes 60 to 80 poems by both well-known and rediscovered poets, selected on the basis of their individual merit and as illustrations of the evolution of feminist thought and feeling. Reflecting their own cultural milieus as well as enduring themes, the poets write of love and friendship, revolution and peace, religion, nature, isolation, work, and family. The Dutch, French, German, and Italian volumes represent their respective countries; the Hispanic volume includes poems from the many Spanish-speaking nations; and the Hebrew volume encompasses writing in Hebrew from around the world. The poems are presented in their original languages alongside English translations. Each volume includes an introduction, placing the poetry in historical and aesthetic perspective, and full biographical and bibliographical notes on the poets.

Watching her Russian immigrant mother, Irina, struggle to put food on the table, Nina, a beautiful and restless teenager, vows her life will be different. When a strapping older man in a fancy car appears at school one day offering her luxuries her single mother cannot afford, Nina believes he's her ticket out of her dumpy little town. Ignoring the danger signs and her mother's constant pleas, which end in exhausting screaming matches, she packs a suitcase and leaves home after one last fight. Ten days later, a terrified Nina, her dress torn, is hiding in the stairwell of a Tel Aviv apartment after witnessing a murder she cannot talk about. She is discovered by one of the building's tenants, a confused, lonely old widow who mistakes her for the granddaughter she hasn't seen for a long while, not since her son moved his family to America. "You've come back to me, Dana'le." Instead of correcting the mistake, the desperate Nina jumps at the chance for a place to hide. Hiding from her mother and the dangerous man who are both frantically searching for her, Nina settles into the old woman's apartment. But how long can Nina possibly hide out until the poor woman realizes she's not who she says she is, or before someone else, her homesick son in America who keeps calling, or the lovely local neighbors who drop by with groceries, catches on?

Shunra is Aramaic for "cat." Schmetterling is German for "butterfly." In Yoel Hoffmann's new book, these and numerous other creatures, cultures, and languages meet in a magical shimmering hymn to childhood. Hoffmann traces his hero's developing consciousness of the ways-and-wonders of the world as though he were peering through a tremendous kaleidoscope: all that was perceived, all that is remembered, is rendered in fluid fragments of color and light. With remarkable delicacy and sweep, Hoffmann captures childhood from the amazed inside out, and without the backward-looking wash of grown-up sentiment. Instead, the boy's deadpan registration of the human comedy around him is offered up as strangely magical fact. Beautifully translated by Peter Cole, The Shunra & the Schmetterling is fiction for lovers of poetry and poetry for lovers of fiction--a small marvel of a book, and one of the author's finest to date.

Abraham Mapu (1808-1867) was one of the first, & finest, of the novelists to write in Hebrew. Heavily influenced by a wide range of sources, the Bible, the Romantic Novelists, & renewed pride in ancient Jewish history, his works recall the finest works of writers such as Flaubert & other great romantic novelists.

"Marjorie Agosin's intensely personal long poem The Light of Desire is both a secular and sacred meditation on love and its meanings in the land of Israel. Following the tradition of the Song of Songs and the secular poetry of Sepharad, the beloved in The Light of Desire is both physical and metaphorical. The lovers' bodies are the paths, the geography, leading not only from desire to sensual pleasure, but to memory and illumination. The light on the pink stones of Jerusalem, the sunlight of Galilee, from hills to the sea, the fragrant air and "mantle of stars," all become one in this tender, rhapsodic expression of longing and desire. This is not unrequited love, but rather a reciprocal passion that brings exquisite pleasure, pain, a sense of fragility, and the hope and belief in that which is eternal."--Jacket.

"If it be permitted to speak of ‘love at first sound,’ then that’s what I experienced in my first encounter with this poet of prose." So said Thomas Mann of the work of PeterAltenberg. A virtuoso Fin-de-Siècle Viennese innovator of what he called the "telegram style" of writing, Altenberg’s signature short prose straddles the line between the poetic and the prosaic, fiction and observation, harsh verity and whimsical vignette. Inspired by the prose poems of Charles Baudelaire and the Feuilleton—a light journalistic reflection of his day—Altenberg carved out a spare, strikingly modern aesthetic that speaks with an eerie prescience to our own impatient time. Peter Wortsman’s new selection and translation reads like a sly lyrical wink from the turnof-the-century of the telegram to the turn-of-the-millennium of email.

This selection of Antal Szerb's stories and novellas, set first in a quasi-mythical past and then in the London and Paris of the Thirties, provides an exhilarating guide to the writer's development, from precocious beginnings to a masterful maturity.

Product description In this book, Dvir Abramovich brings together a batch of timeless classical Hebrew novels, short stories, and poems, and furnishes readers with commentaries and critical readings of each landmark work. The selection of seminal texts include masterpieces from Yehuda Amichai, Haim Gouri, Amos Oz, Dvorah Baron, Shaul Tchernichovsky, Chaim Nachman Bialik, Hanoch Bartov, Shulamit Hareven, and Aharon Megged. Each interpretative essay includes a bio-graphical overview of the author whose opus is explored. This collection will prove exceptionally useful for teachers who wish to introduce their students to the treasures of contemporary Israeli fiction and are searching for reflective analyses and searching insights. Guaranteed to ignite discussion and debate, this informative and entertaining volume, written in an accessible and lively style, will appeal to a general and academic audience and will tempt readers to read or re-read these great works. Review In Hebrew Classics: A Journey Through Israel's Timeless Fiction and Poetry Dvir Abramovich offers us an intimate and delightful tour through the pastures of Hebrew literature. A refreshing meeting awaits us with writers of various generations who had grown up in separate landscapes and some in the midst of diverse languages...One of the unique characteristics of the book is the choice of literary works that it deals with, free of the bonds of genre definitions. We are offered 'delectable meals' that include interpretive studies of poems and stories of various kinds. The common denominator for this selection is the presentation of texts as junctions of flavour and passion within the rich and fascinating history of modern Hebrew literature. This provides the reader with the ability to experience a bird's eye view of these creative works. This book is a tribute to Hebrew literature, written with love and with the wish to share this love. This is obvious both from the detailed and sensitive studies, and from the commendable descriptive, festive and elegant language. (Yigal Schwartz, Professor of Hebrew Literature and Head of Heksherim: The Research Center for Jewish and Israel Culture, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) Abramovich has done a scrupulous job in scrutinizing these key texts of contemporary Hebrew fiction. The care with which he sets them in their historical and cultural contexts should be instructive for all readers interested in Israel and its predicaments. (Robert Alter, Class of 1937 Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature) The next best thing to reading modern Hebrew literature in the original is getting to know it through the eyes of a lover who is willing to share his passion. In Hebrew Classics: A Journey Through Israel's Timeless Fiction and Poetry Dvir Abramovich invites us to get to know its major figures and his introductions to their work make us eager to know them better. A true scholar can do no better. (Ruth Wisse, Martin Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature) About the Author Dvir Abramovich (PhD University of Melbourne) is director of the University of Melbourne's Centre for Jewish History and Culture and a senior lecturer in Hebrew and Jewish Studies. He was editor of the Australian Journal of Jewish Studies for eight years and president of the Australian Association of Jewish Studies from 2006 to 2010. He has published widely in the area of Israeli and Jewish literature and is co-editor of the book Testifying to the Holocaust (2008) and author of Back to the Future: Israeli Literature of the 1980s and 1990 (2010).

"My mother dreams in Arabic, I dream in Hebrew," says Ronny Someck. Born in 1951, he was uprooted from his native Iraq when he was four. Transplanted to Israel, Someck spent his childhood in a transit camp for new immigrants. There he was surrounded by music, the great singers Umm Kulthum, Farid al Atrash, and Fairuz shouldering up against Elvis Presley and Billie Holiday. No wonder he is so beloved in Israel. In what other poet do we find Tarzan, Marilyn Monroe, and cowboys battling with Rabbi Yehuda Halevi for the hearts and souls of Israelis? Someck's poems are rich in slang and distinguished by staccato rhythms, quick cuts, close-ups, and disturbing segues. As in film noir, the sensations are of speed, danger, uncertainty. His distinct Sephardi voice invokes the odors of falafel and schwarma, the army with its supporting cast of recruits and commandos, the bustle of southern Tel Aviv with its small garages, shops, cheap restaurants, its gangs and its Arab workers. He is also the troubadour of the lovelorn, with poems that are hot, erotic, comic, tragic, agape at the wonders of a tear and a tattoo and a snapshot and a bra and a scarecrow.

"Good readers will find something that can be found only in great literature, the kind written by real poets, a literature that dares to venture into the dark with open eyes and that keeps its eyes open no matter what . . . . The literature of the twenty-first century will belong to Neuman and a few of his blood brothers."--Roberto Bolaño Playful, philosophizing, and gloriously unpredictable, Andrés Neuman's short stories consider love, lechery, history, mortality, family secrets, therapy, Borges, mysterious underwear, translators, and storytelling itself. Here a relationship turns on a line drawn in the sand; an analyst treats a patient who believes he's the real analyst; a discovery in a secondhand shop takes on a cruel significance; a man decides to go to work naked one day. In these small scenes and brief moments Neuman confounds our expectations with dazzling sleight of hand. With a variety of forms and styles, Neuman opens up the possibilities for fiction, calling to mind other greats of Latin American letters, such as Cortázar, Bolaño, and Bioy Casares. Intellectually stimulating and told with a voice that is wry, questioning, sometimes mordantly funny, yet always generously humane, The Things We Don't Do confirms Neuman's place as one of the most dynamic authors writing today. Andrés Neuman was born in Buenos Aires, and grew up and lives in Spain. He was included in Granta 's "Young Spanish-language Novelists" issue and is the author of almost twenty works, two of which-- Traveler of the Century and Talking to Ourselves -- have been translated into English. Traveler of the Century won the Alfaguara Prize and the National Critics Prize, and was longlisted for the 2013 Best Translated book award, and shortlisted for the 2013 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the 2014 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Nick Caistor is a prolific British translator and journalist, best known for his translations of Spanish and Portuguese literature. He is a past winner of the Valle-Inclán Prize for translation and is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4, Times Literary Supplement , and the Guardian. Lorenza Garcia has lived for extended periods in Spain, France, and Iceland. Since 2007, she has translated over a dozen novels and works of non-fiction from French and Spanish.

"Verses to be added to the end of Deuteronomy" Are you kidding, let it be, just write that we were born, we were here, and we drowned in the sea. That's enough. Keep the final verses short, in your generosity, just hint that it's bad here, without love, in the desert, the old people grumbling, even dying all the way here, a long journey and contention . And the day-old baby of the homeland -- hatred -- the baby of the homeland, and its mother -- longing, and the baby of the homeland, swallowing oatmeal and milk, some more, dying and hunger. Write concisely about murder and blood, just hint at a people and a homeland, keep it short, in your generosity (let it be), and remind the reader that we drowned in the sea. Admiel Kosman is one of Israel's most prominent contemporary poets, with eight books of poetry to his credit, and several more of prose. His work evokes multiple tensions between prayer and modern life, sacred texts and eroticism, war and peace, language and translation. After teaching at Bar Ilan University in Israel for many years, Kosman moved permanently to Berlin, where he is now professor of religious studies at Potsdam University and heads the first Reform rabbinical college in Germany to resume operations after the Holocaust. Lisa Katz is the author of Reconstruction (Am Oved) and the translator of Look There: New and Selected Poems of Agi Mishol (Graywolf Press). Her poems, translations, essays, and reviews have appeared in scores of publications, and she is the translation coordinator for the Jerusalem International Poetry Festival. In 2008, she won the Mississippi Review Poetry Prize. She teaches at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and frequently lectures abroad. Shlomit Naor , born in Raanana, Israel, in 1974, is an educator and published poet. She holds an MA in creative writing from Ben Gurion University and a BA in philosophy and literature from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Manas is an epic novel in free verse, an extraordinary blend of Hindu mythology and existentialism depicting in a language of enormous vigor and many voices a mesmerizing story of love, death and rebirth