Zvi Arbel is an Israeli historian whose field is Jewish history. His chosen topic of research is the Petliura massacres of Ukrainian Jews in 1918-1920. Arbel's work is read by the poet Shmuel Foiglman, a Holocaust survivor who sends Arbel a volume of his own poetry in Yiddish. The relationship that develops between the two men is one of ambivalence and fascination; the reserved Israeli historian is alternatively affectionate and resentful towards the enthusiastic but tormented poet. Despite his ambivalence, Arbel is manipulated into helping Foiglman. He embarks on an effort to get Foiglman's poetry translated into Hebrew, and as Foiglman begins to monopolize more and more of his time and resources, Arbel ignores all the warning signs of the effect this is having on his marriage; his wife Nora cannot be dissuaded from her feelings of revulsion towards Foiglman. As the poet unintentionally drives a wedge between them, Arbel and Nora's long and contented marriage goes sour, and in Megged's blend of past and present, lust and nostalgia - tragedy becomes the only way out.

""The echo of the stone/ where I carved the [Buddha's] honorable footprints/ reaches the Heaven, [...]". This book presents the transcription, translation, and analysis of Chinese (753 AD) and Japanese inscriptions (end of the 8th century AD) found on two stones now in the possession of the Yakushiji temple in Nara. All these inscriptions praise the footprints of Buddha, and more exactly their carvings in the stone. The language of the Japanese inscription, which consists of twenty-one poems, reflects the contemporary dialect of Nara. Its writing system shows a quite unique trait, being practically monophonic. The book is richly illustrated by photos of the temple and of the inscriptions"--

"The classical traditionTelugu, the mellifluous language of Andhra Pradesh in southern India, is one of the richest yet least explored of all South Asian literatures. In this volume Velcheru Narayana Rao and David Shulman have brought together mythological, religious, and secular texts by twenty major poets who wrote between the eleventh and nineteenth centuries, providing an authoritative volume overview of one of the world's most creative poetic traditions. An informative, engaging introduction fleshes out the history of Telugu literature, situating its poets in relation to significant literary themes and historical developments and discussing the relationship between Telugu and the classical literature and poetry of Sanskrit."--Amazon.