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| Yoram Kaniuk |
Magic on Lake Kinneret |
| Novella |
1994; Tel Aviv, Yedioth Ahronoth, 2008. 134 pp.
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From the book
In the morning I got up tired. I looked at my beloved in her jar of formalin and it was annoying not to want to get up and not to want to continue sleeping either. Half asleep, I went to the bath, and with Mom`s bubble bath on my body I already heard them shouting at one another. Afterwards I got dressed and they were on either side of the table: she was drinking coffee standing up and he was sitting eating a roll; he wanted to touch a cup of coffee and she hit him, and the coffee flew and dirtied his pants. At that moment I entered, that is I made a sound of someone entering, and they looked at me.
I put on a sweet smile and said, Morning. He got up. I saw how angry he was, he didn`t say a word to her, he just touched my shoulder and said, See you later, daughter, and left.
She sat down on his chair and said, Son of a bitch, he went back to that floozy of his and he thinks that I’ll keep my mouth shut. I said to her, How come you suddenly woke up? What`s new? Then all of a sudden she became a mother and said, Mind your own business, clean the bathtub and do the dishes, I have to go.
Synopsis
One morning, a young girl gets out of bed and sets off on a journey of murderous violence and emotionless relief. Motivated by a strange blend of apathy, curiosity and repulsion, she is accompanied only by her beloved Potonovsky, an embryo preserved in a jar of formalin, neither dead nor alive. And as she acts out her uncontrollable lust for the dark side of existence, this thoughtful yet cold-blooded young woman examines life from the "mundane side of things," as she calls it.
With somber and daring narrative power, Yoram Kaniuk breathes life into his distraught young character. Newly republished, this breathtaking and shocking novella was first published in 1994 under a pen name.
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From the press
For previous books*
Kaniuk must be considered one of the great writers of our time.
Le Monde
Adam Resurrected is one of the great creations of modern Hebrew literature.
La Stampa
Of the novelists I have discovered in translation... the three for whom I have the greatest admiration are Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Peter Handke, and Yoram Kaniuk.
Susan Sontag
Yoram Kaniuk paints larger-than-life protagonists who chase their own demons across dense and dazzling canvases. Grappling with the haunting precariousness of identity and the crippling power of self-deception, the highly original, ambitious Kaniuk continues to deeply move and tantalize the reader with his panoply of disturbed, confused characters.
Publishers Weekly
A writer of remarkable gifts.
New York Review of Books
* Press reviews for the present book not yet available
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