Short Stories

When Tammuz’s first stories were published in 1950, they were ahead of their time and were unusual in comparison to the realistic prose then being published in Israel. Today, they are still considered a milestone in the annals of the Hebrew short story. The present collection combines four books that Tammuz published during his literary career, plus three additional stories.

The tales in Sands of Gold (Machbarot Lesifrut, 1950), Tammuz’s first book, are set in old Tel Aviv—then still a small town— and in a rural settlement south of it, during the time of the British Mandate. Tammuz harkens back nostalgically to the experiences of childhood, to purity, innocence and growing pains. The stories focus on a sensitive, introverted boy, described through the eyes of an adult narrator grieving for a world that has been destroyed.

In his second collection, A Garden Enclosed (Schocken, 1957), Tammuz included satirical, grotesque and topical stories, sketching a portrait of Israeli society after the 1948-49 War of Independence. Here, Tammuz becomes a critic of contemporary Israeli society, condemning the vulgarity and ugliness of modern urban reality. In The Story of Anton the Armenian and Other Stories (Machbarot Lesifrut, 1964), we see Tammuz’s need to respond to historical events emerge. The relationships between characters reflect the conflicts between nations, and these stories of ideas portray Israel that is being built on the ruins of the authentic, rural Jewish-Arab country of the past, during the early Zionist colonization.

In his fourth collection, The Bitter Scent of Geranium (Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1980), Tammuz returns to the Land of Israel in the 1920s and 30s. Embedding them in the great historic events of the time, he portrays various types of Jewish immigrants in old Tel Aviv. Their static nature, their eccentric traits, and the narrator’s distanced objectivity create a humorous tone.