On this episode, Marcela reads from Sayed Kashua’s fourth, and latest novel, Track Changes . The novel was published in December by Grove Press. Kashua’s protagonist is a nameless “I” who shares considerable biographical overlaps with the author. This suggests, perhaps even implies, the so-called truth of Kashua’s first-person fiction. Yet his character, whose job is to transcribe others’ memories onto the page, repeatedly reveals his elisions from and additions to strangers’ memoirs-for-hire, o...
Mar 25, 2020•10 min
Marcela reads from Anat Zecharia’s poem, “One, Two, Three,” which recently appeared in an issue of The Ilanot Review , in collaboration with Granta Hebrew. The poem’s title and subtitle refer to Uzi Hitman’s children song about three dwarfs who sit chatting behind a mountain. Anat is known as an outspoken poet who writes forthrightly about women's desires. Her work has been awarded the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for writers. She has published three collections of poetry — As Soon as Beautif...
Mar 11, 2020•10 min
Marcela highlights poetry from the latest issue of The Ilanot Review which, in collaboration with Granta Hebrew, published English translations of up and coming poets and writers, most of whom are featured for the very first time. Text: “And I Begin to Confess” by Salih Habib, translated by Christine Khoury Bishara. The Ilanot Review “The Children I Will Never Have” by Liat Rosenblatt, translated by Jane Medved. The Ilanot Review “Rivka Speaks” by Ori Ferster, translated by Marcela Sulak. The Il...
Feb 26, 2020•8 min
This week Marcela reads from Nava Semel’s novel, Isra Ilse , an alternative history of the Jewish People in which there was no state of Israel, and no holocaust. The novel is divided into three parts. Part 1, a detective story, opens in September 2001 when Liam Emanuel, an Israeli descendant of Noah, learns about and inherits Grand Island, which is downriver from Niagara Falls. He leaves Israel intending to reclaim this “Promised Land” in America. Shortly after he arrives in America Liam disappe...
Feb 12, 2020•9 min
This week Marcela returns to focus on up and coming Israeli writers who have rarely or never before been translated into English, by featuring Ayala Ben Lulu. This story appears in the latest issue of The Ilanot Review, which was a collaboration with Granta Hebrew. Ayala Ben Lulu is an Israeli poet, winner of the Teva prize for poetry. She holds a B.A. in psychology and an M.Sc. in history and philosophy of science and ideas. Text: Mona Lisa by Ayala Ben Lulu. Translated by Karen Marron. The Ila...
Jan 29, 2020•9 min
This podcast is dedicated to marriage—all the engaged couples with cold feet, newly married couples, whose memories of the ceremony are still fresh, long-married couples who survived the wedding day. We’ll be reading from and discussing the last book Ronit Matalon wrote before her death in 2017. It is called And the Bride Closed the Door , and it was awarded Israel’s prestigious Brenner Prize the day before her death. Previous Podcasts: Bliss The One Facing Us The Sound of her Steps Text: And th...
Jan 15, 2020•10 min
The novel, The First Mrs. Rothschild , by Sara Aharoni, tells the story of the wife of Meir Amschel Rothschild, the founder of the banking dynasty, and is written in the form of a personal journal. Sara Aharoni was born in Israel in 1953. She worked as a teacher, educator and school principal for twenty years. Together with her husband, Meir Aharoni, Sara wrote, edited and published a series of books about Israel, as well as six children’s books. She is the author of the bestselling Saltanat's L...
Jan 01, 2020•10 min
Today we read from the story The Shop on Main Street , written by Ladislav Grosman, a Slovak novelist and screenwriter. The story is comical and tragic, and it asks the question—are we not our brother’s keeper? Who is our brother? Text: Shop on Main Street by Ladislav Grosman. Translated by Iris Urwin Lewitova. Karolinum Press, 2019.
Dec 18, 2019•8 min
Set in contemporary Tel Aviv forty eight hours after Israelis discover all their Palestinian neighbors have vanished, the novel The Book of Disappearances unfolds through alternating narrators, Alaa, a young Palestinian man who converses with his dead grandmother in the journal he left behind when he disappeared, and his Jewish neighbor, Ariel, a journalist struggling to understand the traumatic event. Text: The Book of Disappearances by Ibtisam Azem, translated by Sinan Antoon....
Dec 11, 2019•10 min
What if, when you were in Kindergarten, your mother had given you a magic wand that allowed you to read people’s minds? Well, that’s just what happens in Orit Gidali’s book, Nora the Mind Reader , which will bring to a close our month of illustrated children’s books written by Israeli poets and writers. Previous Episodes on Orit Gidali: https://tlv1.fm/israel-in-translation/2016/07/26/did-you-pack-it-yourself/ https://tlv1.fm/israel-in-translation/2019/10/16/welcoming-in-the-ushpizin-poems-for-s...
Dec 04, 2019•7 min
No Israeli childhood experience would be complete without Leah Goldberg. Her story “Room for Rent” was published in 1948 and is one of the most classic children’s books available in Hebrew. Shmuel Katz’s illustrations bring Goldberg’s words to life in both the original and in Jessica Setbon’s 2017 translation. Leah Goldberg born in Königsberg, East Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia), in 1911, moved to Mandate Palestine in 1935. Well known during her lifetime as a poet, author, and translator, she...
Nov 27, 2019•10 min
This month we continue our spotlight on beautifully written and illustrated Israeli children’s books translated into English with The Heart Shaped Leaf , by Shira Geffen and illustrated by David Polonsky. The story opens with eerily beautiful illustrations of a very rare day in Israel: an overcast sky dotted with yellow leaves; tree branches are bent in the wind, and a cobalt blue school building glows out of the gray. The book's main character Alona makes her way home from school. Text: The Hea...
Nov 20, 2019•7 min
Some of Marcela's favorite children’s books in Hebrew have been written by well known poets and illustrated by some of Israel’s most talented graphic artists. This episode features The Mermaid in the Bathtub , written by the poet, essayist and writer, Nurit Zarchi, and illustrated by Rutu Modan. Translated by Tal Goldfajn, and published by Restless Books. Previous podcast on Rutu Modan: https://tlv1.fm/israel-in-translation/2015/08/20/rutu-modans-graphic-touch/ Previous podcasts on Nurit Zarchi:...
Nov 13, 2019•6 min
For the next few weeks, we will feature work published in The Ilanot Review ’s special collaborative issue with Granta Hebrew, focusing on new, up-and-coming writers. And so it is a pleasure to introduce the young writer Nano Shabtai, translated by Maya Klein. Shabtai is already known in Hebrew arts and letters as a poet, dramatist and director. She was born in Jerusalem, to a large family, where she attended the High School of the Arts, majoring in theatre. She studied acting and directing at t...
Nov 06, 2019•7 min
Many poems in Ronny Someck's The Milk Underground deal with being a father of girls—adolescent and teenaged, young women. They explore the fraught territory of daughter’s bodies—body as dowry, body as a locus for pleasure and for betrayal, and the poems extend a fatherly embrace to the girls after their pained mother has broken off relations. Previous Someck Episode Text: Ronny Someck, The Milk Underground , translated by Hana Inbar and Robert Manaster. White Pine Press, 2015....
Oct 30, 2019•7 min
Ayelet Tsabari was born in Israel to a large family of Yemeni descent. She grew up in a suburb of Tel Aviv, served in the Israeli army, and travelled extensively throughout South East Asia, Europe and North America. In 1998 Ayelet moved to Vancouver, Canada, where she studied film and photography. She directed two documentary films, one of which won an award at the Palm Spring International Short Film Festival. As an Israeli writer, she is unusual in that she usually writes in English, not Hebre...
Oct 23, 2019•11 min
We’re currently in the days of Sukkot, in which Jews everywhere dwell (or at least take their meals) in a temporary structure called a Sukkah to commemorate the forty years of wandering in the desert, and also because Sukkot is an agricultural festival as well, and in ancient times people lived in temporary shelters as they harvested. One of the customs of Sukkot is inviting guests for meals into the Sukkah, close friends or needy strangers, as well as the supernatural —“Ushpizin” is Aramaic for...
Oct 16, 2019•11 min
We are now in the days of Awe between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, which will take place next week. This week, Marcela reads from Amichai Chasson, whose poem America gives a portrait of the everyday reference that Yom Kippur serves in everyday life. The poem, as its title suggests, also illustrates the relationship between Israel and the United States. It is translated by Vivian Eden. Like many international poets encountering America, Chasson has written his Walt Whitman in the supermarket poe...
Oct 02, 2019•8 min
Rosh Hashanah begins on Sunday night—it is the beginning of the Jewish new year. And to usher it in, we read an excerpt from Etgar Keret’s short story, “Ladder,” published in his brand-new English language collection, “Fly Already.” Text: Fly Already , by Etgar Keret, translated by Sondra Silverston, et. al. Riverhead Books, Sept. 2019.
Sep 25, 2019•8 min
Yesterday, Yonatan Berg’s first poetry collection appeared in Joanna Chen’s English translation, Frayed Light , published by the Wesleyan Poetry Series. The poems in this collection gather all of these experiences—religion, settlements and the Palestinian neighbors they displace or live next to, military service—into heartfelt narrative poems. Berg was born in 1981 in Jerusalem to a religious family and grew up in Psagot, a settlement in the West Bank. After serving in the military, Berg gave up...
Sep 18, 2019•9 min
Israeli elections are just one day shy of a week away, and now might be a good opportunity to examine the use of stereotypes to shut down important conversations that we might have, as we elect the people who will represent us. Today, Marcela reads a lyrical essay from a graduate student in poetry at Bar-Ilan’s Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing. Her name is Hiba Ghannan, and this piece will appear in her thesis entitled “Leftovers.” Text: “My Essay on Stereotypes” by Hiba Ghann...
Sep 11, 2019•7 min
Yesterday something wonderful happened—Etgar Keret’s newest short story collection, Fly Already , appeared in the world, in English, translated by a ridiculously talented cast of translators. This collection contains all the charm, the absurdities, the intelligence and surreal sense of Keret’s previous collections, but this time, most of the stories are somewhat longer. Today, Marcela reads the shortest piece in the book, and the final story, Evolution of a Breakup . Text: Fly Already , by Etgar...
Sep 04, 2019•6 min
Today Marcela reads a story containing the writer Yossel Birstein’s two great loves: Buses and Shoes. Birstein was born in Poland in 1920. Having moved to Melbourne, Australia and later to Israel, he changed languages, continents, countries, towns, as well as professions, more than once or twice. Not many people work both as a shepherd and a national archivist in their lives. He wrote most of his life in Yiddish and began to write Hebrew later. “He didn't call himself a writer, but rather a craf...
Aug 28, 2019•8 min
On this week's episode, Marcela excerpts from a fairy tale written by Leah Goldberg. She was a prolific Hebrew-language poet, author, playwright, literary translator, and comparative literary researcher. Her writings are considered classics of Israeli literature. Text: The Rose Garden (a Fairy Tale) by Leah Goldberg. Translated by Leanne Raday .
Aug 21, 2019•10 min
Naji Daher, a writer, poet, and playwright, was born in Nazareth and lives there. He works as a creative writing teacher and writes literature reviews. He has published more than fifty books, including six novels. Daher's works have been translated into Hebrew, English and other languages. He is the winner of the 2000 Prime Minister Prize. Text: “Nightly Lament” by Naji Daher. Translated from the Arabic by Peter Clark and published in The Short Story Project ....
Aug 14, 2019•9 min
Gali-Dana Singer is a bilingual poet, translator, an artist and photographer, born in St. Petersburg, who immigrated to Israel in 1988. To Think: A River, her first book of poems in Hebrew, in translation from the original Russian, appeared in 2000. The most recent of three volumes written in Hebrew, Translucent, was published in 2017. She’s published seven collections in Russian. In a 2003 interview with Lisa Katz, Singer notes: I always emphasize that I haven't switched from Russian to Hebrew,...
Aug 07, 2019•8 min
On Monday, the literary world lost one of its bright lights with the passing of Tuvia Ruebner. He was 95 years old, and passed in his home on Kibbutz Merhavia, where he had lived since arrival from Nazi occupied Bratislava as a teenager in 1942. He loved his home on the kibbutz so much that he even refusing Lea Goldberg’s invitation to move to Jerusalem and work with her at the Hebrew University. Born in 1924 as Kurt Erich in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, Ruebner grew up in a German-speaking Jewis...
Jul 31, 2019•9 min
Israel Bar Kohav was born in Israel, the grandchild of Russian immigrants who were among the founders of the city of Tel Aviv. His ancestors took part in what is known as the Second Aliyah, an influential, ideological wave of immigration that took place between 1904 and 1914. Bar Kohav himself grew up in Givatayim and Ramat Gan, in the greater Tel Aviv area, and his poem refer to these areas. One of the most predominant themes in his work is childhood. He’s written about this period in nearly ea...
Jul 24, 2019•9 min
Lali Tsipi Michaeli’s work attempts to capture, not just the mind at work, but also the spirit, the soul, as it becomes aware of itself as an entity both anchored in, and apart from, the body. Likewise, the body is often viewed as a physical object, one of many that occupy the world. Lali Tsipi Michaeli was born in the Georgian republic and immigrated to Israel with her parents at the age of seven. She studied comparative literature at Bar-Ilan University, and returned to Georgia in the early 19...
Jul 17, 2019•9 min
The poetry of Adi Assis injects us with the distress that consumes his days and nights. His laments madden us as we find ourselves rare witness to circumstances usually hidden from view, and even more profoundly, to the hidden reaches of the poet's heart. Podcast on Anat Levin’s poetry Text: Various poems by Adi Assis from Poetry International Rotterdam...
Jul 10, 2019•8 min
