Motti (15 page)
Authors: Asaf Schurr
The Hebrew Literature Series at Dalkey Archive Press makes available major works of Hebrew-language literature in English translation. Featuring exceptional authors at the forefront of Hebrew letters, the series aims to introduce the rich intellectual and aesthetic diversity of contemporary Hebrew writing and culture to English-language readers.
This series is published in collaboration with the Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature, at
www.ithl.org.il
. Thanks are also due to the Office of Cultural Affairs at the Consulate General of Israel, NY, for their support.
ASAF SCHURR
was born in Jerusalem in 1976 and has a BA in philosophy and theater from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. At present he is a translator and writes literary reviews for the Hebrew press. Schurr has received the Bernstein Prize (2007), the Minister of Culture Prize (2007) for
Amram
, and the Prime Minister's Prize for
Motti
(2008).
Â
TODD HASAK-LOWY
is Associate Professor of Hebrew Literature at the University of Florida. His first collection of short stories,
The Task of This Translator
, was published in 2005; his debut novel,
Captives
, appeared in 2008.
1
This figureâwhich includes fiction, poetry, and books for childrenâcomes from Nilli Cohen at the Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature.
2
The influential Marxist critic Fredric Jameson has advanced such an approach to so-called “third-world” literature (an obviously problematic category, especially in the Israeli case). In “third-world texts,” according to him, “the story of the private individual destiny is always an allegory of the embattled situation of the public third-world culture and society.” Jameson's widely read article is typically rejected in scholarly circles, but I think it's fair to say this allegorical shadow looms over much reading of, in this case, modern Hebrew fiction. See Fredric Jameson, “Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism,”
Social Text
, No. 15 (Autumn, 1986), pp. 65â88.
3
It should be noted that
Motti
received considerable attention upon its publication in Israel, including a glowing front-page review in the
Haaretz
book supplement (more or less the Israeli equivalent of the
New York Times Book Review
or the
Guardian
). The Israeli reading public's (and/or its critical establishment's) readiness to accept and even embrace
Motti
on its own unconventional terms says something about the expansive sense of what constitutes Israeli culture within Israel here in the early twenty-first century. Anglophone reading sensibilities, I'm guessing, are rather parochial by comparison, as I'd more confidently recommend
Motti
to a fan of David Foster Wallace than toone who prefers Amos Oz.
4
Robert Alter,
Partial Magic: The Novel as Self-Conscious Genre
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), ix.