Israel in Translation

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 Love, based on her mother’s life story and the novelPersian Silence.

Text:

The First Mrs. Rothschild, a novel by Sara Aharoni. Translated by Yardenne Greenspan. Amazon Crossing, July 2019.

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.

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.

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.

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-sukkot/

Text:

Nora The Mind Reader, by Orit Gidali, illustrated by Aya Gordon-Noy, translated by Annette Appel. Enchanged Lion Books, 2012.

Music:

יהודית רביץ - הילדה הכי יפה בגן

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 is remembered as one of Israel's great authors and literary scholars. She earned a PhD in Semitic languages from Bonn University and helped found Hebrew University's Department of Comparative Literature, which she chaired until her death in 1970.

Previous Episodes on Leah Goldberg:

https://tlv1.fm/israel-in-translation/2019/08/21/a-fairy-tale-by-leah-goldberg/

https://tlv1.fm/arts-culture/2014/04/02/i-have-been-planted-with-the-pines-israel-in-translation/

Text:

Leah Goldberg, Room for Rent. Illustrated by Shmuel Katz, translated by Jessica Setbon. Gefen Publishing House, 2018.

Music:

Leah Goldberg: Le-mi She-ino Ma'amin, sung by Yehudit Ravitz

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 Heart Shaped Leaf, by Shira Geffen. Illustrated by David Polonsky. Green Bean Press. Green Bean Books

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:

https://tlv1.fm/israel-in-translation/2019/05/22/nurit-zarchis-the-plague/

https://tlv1.fm/israel-in-translation/2015/07/15/nurit-zarchis-baby-blues/

Text:

The Mermaid in the Bathtub by Nurit Zarchi. Illustrations by Rutu Modan. Translated by Tal Goldfajn. Yonder (Restless Books) 2019

Music:

Millie, “Mermaid in the Bathtub” from Miracle Milk

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 the Kibbutz College in Tel Aviv, and completed the screenwriting track at the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School.

Since 2005 she has worked as a fiction reader for an Israeli publishing house, and as a book editor and reviewer. Her first book of poems, The Iron Girl, was published in 2006. She’s published a collection of short stories, children stories and a few plays.

Text:

Corn by Nano Shabtai, translated by Maya Klein.

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.