I Told It Already, Yehezkel

I Told It Already, Yehezkel is set in provincial Israel, usually a forgotten backwater with a shabby past, a precarious present and a grim future. The citizenry is a hodgepodge of small, repressed people with guilty secrets and perversions. These mild, self-effacing lives are disturbed by violence, murder, suicide and adultery. The narrow-minded, superstitious and hypocritical small-town norms provide the comic element in the story, but Bar-Yosef’s real skill is in making you sympathize even with obnoxious characters. Shedding their masks, they become human and likeable.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve read a Hebrew story with such a strong provincial, rural aroma.” wrote Haya Hoffman. “There is no doubt that when writing about the sensual side of life, Yitzhak Bar-Yosef is no sissy.” Nor is he put off from probing the small, ugly side of human existence or from emphasizing the most elementary and primal urges and needs. Critic Amela Einat writes: “It seems to me that Bar-Yosef’s realism is a cover for a profound expression of something spiritual and humane.”