After publishing a series of novels
and novellas, Tammuz returns to the short story and to the Land of Israel of
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. But they do not
aspire to be, nor could they be the heroes of their time. These are not
practical people, they are incapable of being part of a collective, and they
are not trying to fulfill themselves as artists or as private individuals.
History has destroyed their pleasures and dreams: the events of the time crush
them, but they do not complain and, surprisingly, show neither resilience nor
determination. Instead, it is their static nature, their eccentricities and the
distanced objectivity with which the narrator portrays them, that produce the humorous
tone of the book.
PARTIAL ENGLISH TRANSLATION AVAILABLE.
Tammuz’s stories are flawlessly told, using
means that are astonishingly simple: clever phrasing and organization of the events.
The most complex situations are told with a maximum of economy and with
uncommon naturalness. This book is definitely an event in the life of Hebrew
literature.
Yosef
Oren, Maariv, 16.5.80
We have here
one of most interesting and cultivated new collections of stories … There is,
in these love stories, a certain magic … their structure and the rhythm of the
language are polished, as is the way that Tammuz blends in stylized literary
Hebrew, which he then undermines to create comic and ironic effects ... Beyond
that, there are often also intriguing and believable paradoxes that touch upon
the trivialities of life …Tammuz is a great storyteller precisely because of
his simplicity.
Yaron
Golan, Davar, 16.5.80