ITHL News

Ronit Matalon receives the prestigious Bernstein Prize 2009

Ronit Matalon receives the prestigious Bernstein Prize 2009 and is shortlisted for the Sapir Prize for The Sound of our Steps!!

The jury for the Bernstein Prize noted: "The Sound of 0ur Steps" is a really important novel. Matalon’s loyalty to her art is absolute. Her amazing linguistic sensitivity, her lyrical bent, her originality of form and image, her ability to create a space for memory and the courage to touch on politics in a new way – all of these qualities make her a very fitting award-winner.”

The Sound of Our Steps will be published in English by Holt/Metropolitan in New York.

From the book "The Sound of 0ur Steps"...

Amos Kenan (1927 - 2009)

Amos Kenan brilliant journalist, playwright, sculptor, painter, songwriter, poet and thinker, died on 4 August.
A complex, sharp and passionate man, he was “an original,” say his friends, “whom it was fascinating to talk to, to listen to.”

Part of Amos Kenan’s biography appears in the book Unrepentant: Four chapters in the life of Amos Kenan (2008) by writer and scholar Nurith Gertz, his widow. Gertz depicts Kenan’s tortured childhood, the period when he belonged to the prestate underground militia and his violent struggle for the Israel he so desired.

Unrepentant has been on the national bestseller list for the last 40 weeks, and shows no sign of letting up. It was selected as one of the best 10 books of 2008.

http://www.ithl.org.il/authors.html

Yoram Kaniuk’s epic novel, The Last Jew – now in French

After its recent acclaim in the U.S. (Grove Press), Yoram Kaniuk’s epic novel, The Last Jew – now in French (Fayard), translated by Laurence Sendrowitz

The Last Jew has also been published in German (Insel/Suhrkamp), Danish (Holkenfeldt) and Swedish (Forum).

Preview
This major Israeli writer returns with a masterpiece… in which he travels to the end of Jewish memory. Very powerful prose that never lets go of you. The book is a labyrinth of overlapping memories, and its disturbing themes are even more topical now than 20 years ago.

Livres Hebdo

From the international press...

A rich, demanding, life-affirming masterpiece… The cyclical nature of history is analyzed with… revelatory complexity. Not to be missed.

An essential acquisition.

The Last Jew is ruthlessly obtrusive yet endlessly evasive – a fierce contrast reflecting the chaotic complexity and violent collisions of reality… A colossal vision, as twisting, winding and convoluted as the Jewish history it retells.

Svenska Dagbladet (Sweden)

Lyric-epic art of the highest caliber…The Last Jew has the shimmer of legend, of Greek tragedy, but Kaniuk lifts us up over the deep darkness of destruction into profound beauty.

Eskilstuna-Kuriren (Sweden)

The Last Jew is a book that should be read without interruption, since each sentence has at least two meanings....The narrator lifts us over and above the deep darkness of destruction into the most solemn beauty.

Aftonbladet (Denmark)

S. Yizhar, The Story of Khirbet Khizeh, Ibis Editions

First published in Hebrew in 1949, this controversial story of an Arab village is still heatedly debated today. Written by “the great master of Hebrew lyrical prose,” as Yizhar (1916-2006) has been called, it is one of his finest. To Amos Oz, the impact of this major author was so great that “there is some of Yizhar in every Israeli writer who has come after him."

Published in Italian (Einaudi), German (Suhrkamp), Spanish (Minuscula) and English (Ibis)
Forthcoming in French (Galaade), Norwegian (Aschehoug) and Greek (Melani)

From the international press…

Yizhar’s daring use of internal monologue, his descriptions of nature, his moulding of ancient Hebrew into a modern literary vehicle, and his obsession with the battle between collectivism and individualism, inspired succeeding generations… Ultimately inimitable.

Guardian

“I didn't write this story as a conflict between Jews and Arabs," Yizhar insisted. "I wrote this as a man who was hurt by what he saw. This story is about Israel, it's about Viet Nam, it's about any place where someone is suddenly caught in war."

Time Magazine

Yishai Sarid’s remarkable literary thriller Limassol

Only just out, was immediately snapped up in French (Actes Sud), German (Kein & Aber), Danish (Ferdinand), English USA (Europa), Italian (Edizioni e/o), and more on the way…

On his way to finding a dangerous terrorist suspect, a Shin Bet operative becomes involved with a Palestinian intellectual who is desperately in need of medical treatment. In Limassol, he will finally have to choose between his professional loyalties and the new human bonds he has formed. A gripping novel and a journey to the shadowy side of the conflicted Israeli mind.

From the Hebrew press...

It grips the reader, stirs something in him and slaps him in the face. Sarid truly shines out… Limassol’s achievement is its triple function: as a detective novel, a spy novel and especially as a brilliant political critique.

Haaretz

Limassol is the Israeli version of Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground, a parable on the ailments of Israeli society as seen in the Israeli idea of security, in the culture, in the drugs and crime industries and in the conflict with the Palestinians.

Zman Yerushalaim

From the book "Limassol"...

Etgar Keret - The Meaning of Life for $9.99

The Meaning of Life for $9.99 – based on the wildly inventive short-short stories of Etgar Keret, whose stellar success abroad continues to grow… To date, his books have been published in 32 countries.
Director: Tatia Rosenthal

Among Top 20 Box-Office Hits in Paris

From the international press…

You must go and see The Meaning of Life for $9.99 – it is unlike any other film… The meeting between the two sides of life – [enchantment and disillusion] – produces a sort of thermal shock, a delightful yet troubling effect. Our daily worries are there all the time, but you will hardly recognize them because they have become so strange and poetic.

Le Monde

The creators [of this film] have performed a little miracle … within two minutes, you are caught up and held by the emotion and absurd humor of this film … so funny yet poetic.

Liberation

I think Etgar Keret is a brilliant writer, entirely different from any other I know. He is the voice of the next generation.

Salman Rushdie

Savyon Liebrecht - The Banality of Love

The Banality of Love – Love and recrimination between Hannah Arendt & Martin Heidegger

A great success in Germany: two separate productions – Bonn (Schauspielhaus) and Dortmund. Now showing in Israel…

Famous philosopher Martin Heidegger and his brilliant 18-year-old Jewish student are drawn to each other – even though Heidegger is married. But the reality of the 1930s separates them, leading the one into the arms of the Nazi party with academic honors and the other, persecuted, to flee her country.
Years later, two meetings take place, but Heidegger fails to express any remorse for abandoning her to her fate.

From the international press...

This is drama of a quality that ought to receive an award: quiet, but exciting; rich in ideas, but vivid; demanding, but also entertaining. Tension never recedes... in every respect an extraordinary performance.

General-Anzeiger

Liebrecht’s play raises important questions [and involves] great tension.... Lengthy applause at the end included the author.

Kolner Stadtanzeiger

Author Asaf Schurr

In his own words…

Born and raised in Jerusalem, Asaf Schurr still lives nearby, in the less chicken-inhabited part of a moshav a few miles off the highway. Apart of messing with other people's texts for a living, he volunteers as a dog trainer for the animal shelter his wife works at. On whatever time he has left, he practices the art of Wu Wei Gung Fu - a scientific street fighting system founded by a disciple of the late Bruce Lee. His own dogs aren't too thrilled by the sudden movements.

Schurr has received the Bernstein Prize (2007), the Minister of Culture Prize (2007) for his first novel, Amram, and the Levy Eshkol Prize for Motti (2008).

Motti – rights sold for German (Berlin Verlag), French (Actes Sud) and Italian (Voland). See excerpt below…

Todd Hasak-Lowy – American author (Harcourt), and translator of Motti, by Asaf Schurr.

Q & A

Poets’ Corner – Natan Zach

The Complete Poems by Israel’s leading living poet – just published by Hakibbutz Hameuchad (3 vols). Zach (b.1930) led a group of post-Independence poets, and has exerted a profound influence on the development of modern Hebrew poetry. His poems have been published abroad in 23 languages.

Selected Poems by Natan Zach will shortly by published in Italian (Einaudi) and Chinese (People’s Literature)

Collections of poems have previously been published in English (Atheneum, U.S.; Royal Press, UK), French (Belfond), Italian (Donzelli), Spanish (Visor) and Arabic (Fradis El-Janabi).

A Song for the Wise Lovers

Natan Zach reads his poem

Amalia Rosenblum, Where The Village Road Ends

Writer, journalist and screenwriter Amalia Rosenblum gives us the adventures, thoughts and hobbies of Goni the dog, who loses a friend, finds another, gives parties, reads the newspapers, writes poems and reminisces about Laika, the first Russian dog in space. An unforgettable story about friendship and growing up; about human beings, who have so little imagination, and animals who have so much.

Now in German (Beltz & Gelberg), forthcoming in Italian (Salani)
English translation available for publishers

First reviews from the German press…

"Ich finde dieses Buch super, es wird nie langweilig Ich finde nichts an diesem Buch doof."
I think this book is super, it’s never boring. There’s nothing silly in this book.

Emma Spieler, Age 8

I don’t want to tell you what happens next because the story is simply beautiful and adults will enjoy it.

www.hugendubel.de