My First Sony

Benny Barbash

Funny, bittersweet and often shocking, the story of 10-year-old Yotam’s family unfolds via the recordings Yotam made on a tape recorder he got from his father. For several years, the boy records the goings-on in his family, and through this medium the reader also observes a panorama of Israel in the ‘80s, with all its political extremes. Yotam's architect mother is a leftist, born in Argentina, a vociferous supporter of the Peace Now movement; his father, a mediocre playwright, is too busy cheating on his wife and promoting his reputation as a womanizer to have consistent political views. In addition, there are Yotam’s older brother and younger sister, two crazy aunts, right-wing religious uncles, four grandparents and more. But My First Sony is not simply a mirror of contemporary Israeli society. Yotam’s tapes monitor the gradual dissolution of his parents’ unhappy marriage, and the rhythms of the family dance, carried out over several generations.



A funny and hyper-realistic chonicle with irresistible scenes of political-familial hysteria... Deliciously precise and mocking.
Liberation

A talented, profound and subtle writer.
Livres Hebdo

Delicious humor and a razor-sharp perception for the absurd in life.
Berliner Morgenpost

Barabash's achievement is that he has made intelligible... the relationship in Israel today between the historical conflict and the contemporary one.
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

Masterly. Benny Barbash is one of the rising Israeli writers.
Navtemboriki (Greece)