Israel in Translation

Last week we featured Ayelet Gundar-Goshen's latest book, Waking Lions. This week, host Marcela Sulak reads from Gundar-Goshen's first novel, the Sapir Prize-winning One Night, Markovitch. The novel opens on the eve of World War II, with a group of young men setting out from Mandate Palestine to participate in fictitious marriages with Jewish girls who wish to escape Europe and reach the Jewish homeland, then under British rule.

"He felt Sonya's entrance into the room before he saw her, because over the last six weeks he had learned to pick out the smell of oranges even on a busy street. Therefore he had several seconds to compose himself before turning around and facing her in her ordinary blue dress, part of a sweet routine that was not his."

Gundar-Goshen was born in Israel in 1982, and she has already achieved great success in writing for television and film.

Text: One Night, Markovitch, by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen. Translated by Sondra Silverston. Pushkin Press, 2015.

Further reading: Waking Lions by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen. Translated by Sondra Silverston. Pushkin Press, 2016.

Music: Khavurat Renanim - Shir HaNamal Benny Goodman - Wang Wang Blues Benny Goodman - One O'Clock Jump Shepheard's Hotel Jazz Orchestra - Where Or When Fred Astaire - Cheek To Cheek

Last week we featured Ayelet Gundar-Goshen’s latest book, Waking Lions. This week, host Marcela Sulak reads from Gundar-Goshen’s first novel, the Sapir Prize-winning One Night, Markovitch. The novel opens on the eve of World War II, with a group of young men setting out from Mandate Palestine to participate in fictitious marriages with Jewish girls who wish to escape Europe and reach the Jewish homeland, then under British rule.

"He felt Sonya’s entrance into the room before he saw her, because over the last six weeks he had learned to pick out the smell of oranges even on a busy street. Therefore he had several seconds to compose himself before turning around and facing her in her ordinary blue dress, part of a sweet routine that was not his."

Gundar-Goshen was born in Israel in 1982, and she has already achieved great success in writing for television and film.

Text:
One Night, Markovitch, by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen. Translated by Sondra Silverston. Pushkin Press, 2015.

Further reading:
Waking Lions by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen. Translated by Sondra Silverston. Pushkin Press, 2016.

Music:
Khavurat Renanim - Shir HaNamal
Benny Goodman - Wang Wang Blues
Benny Goodman - One O'Clock Jump
Shepheard's Hotel Jazz Orchestra - Where Or When
Fred Astaire - Cheek To Cheek

Host Marcela Sulak reads from Ayelet Gundar-Goshen's novel Waking Lions, published in English translation in March 2016. The opening of the novel describes the moment when Dr. Eitan Green, who has just come off a 19-hour shift at Beer Sheva Hospital, has an accident...

"He is thinking that the moon is the most beautiful he has ever seen when he hits the man. For the first moment after he hits him he's still thinking about the moon, and then he suddenly stops, like a candle that has been blown out."

Gundar-Goshen was born in Israel in 1982. Her film scripts have won prizes at international festivals, and Waking Lions is her second novel.

Text: Waking Lions by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen. Translated by Sondra Silverston. Pushkin Press, 2016.

Further reading: One Night, Markovitch, by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen. Translated by Sondra Silverston. Pushkin Press, 2015.

Music: Mike Patton - Contrapositive (The Solitude of Prime Numbers OST) Mike Patton - Weight of Consequences (The Solitude of Prime Numbers OST) Ennio Morricone - Ninna Nanna Per Adulteri (Cuore Di Mamma OST)

Host Marcela Sulak reads from Ayelet Gundar-Goshen's novel Waking Lions, published in English translation in March 2016. The opening of the novel describes the moment when Dr. Eitan Green, who has just come off a 19-hour shift at Beer Sheva Hospital, has an accident...

"He is thinking that the moon is the most beautiful he has ever seen when he hits the man. For the first moment after he hits him he’s still thinking about the moon, and then he suddenly stops, like a candle that has been blown out."

Gundar-Goshen was born in Israel in 1982. Her film scripts have won prizes at international festivals, and Waking Lions is her second novel.

Text:
Waking Lions by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen. Translated by Sondra Silverston. Pushkin Press, 2016.

Further reading:
One Night, Markovitch, by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen. Translated by Sondra Silverston. Pushkin Press, 2015.

Music:
Mike Patton - Contrapositive (The Solitude of Prime Numbers OST)
Mike Patton - Weight of Consequences (The Solitude of Prime Numbers OST)
Ennio Morricone - Ninna Nanna Per Adulteri (Cuore Di Mamma OST)

When Orly Castel-Bloom's Dolly City was first published in 1992, the French paper "Le Monde" declared that "Kafka has finally arrived in Tel Aviv." Host Marcela Sulak reads two excerpts from Castel-Bloom's remarkable novel, which was translated into English by Dalya Bilu in 2010.

"First of all, I decided I would inoculate the child against as many diseases as possible. I ran outside to buy vaccines against tetanus, whooping cough, diphtheria, polio, measles, jaundice, scarlet fever, small pox, influenza, etc., and I gave them to him all at once—though I knew you shouldn't do this. I couldn't stop myself, I couldn't control my maternal instinct. The child reacted immediately with a high fever and convulsions..."

Dolly City has been included in the UNESCO Collection of Representative Works, and in 1999 Castel-Bloom was declared one of the 50 most influential women in Israel.

Hear our previous podcast on Orly Castel-Bloom's short story "Heathcliff."

Text: Dolly City by Orly Castel-Bloom. Translated by Dalya Bilu. Dalkey Archive Press, 2010.

Music: Proud - You're My Dream Cliff Martinez - Ask Him Why He Killed My Brother (Only God Forgives OST) Cliff Martinez - Wanna Fight (Only God Forgives OST)

When Orly Castel-Bloom’s Dolly City was first published in 1992, the French paper "Le Monde" declared that "Kafka has finally arrived in Tel Aviv." Host Marcela Sulak reads two excerpts from Castel-Bloom's remarkable novel, which was translated into English by Dalya Bilu in 2010.

"First of all, I decided I would inoculate the child against as many diseases as possible. I ran outside to buy vaccines against tetanus, whooping cough, diphtheria, polio, measles, jaundice, scarlet fever, small pox, influenza, etc., and I gave them to him all at once—though I knew you shouldn’t do this. I couldn’t stop myself, I couldn’t control my maternal instinct. The child reacted immediately with a high fever and convulsions..."

Dolly City has been included in the UNESCO Collection of Representative Works, and in 1999 Castel-Bloom was declared one of the 50 most influential women in Israel.

Hear our previous podcast on Orly Castel-Bloom's short story "Heathcliff."

Text:
Dolly City by Orly Castel-Bloom. Translated by Dalya Bilu. Dalkey Archive Press, 2010.

Music:
Proud - You're My Dream
Cliff Martinez - Ask Him Why He Killed My Brother (Only God Forgives OST)
Cliff Martinez - Wanna Fight (Only God Forgives OST)

Poet, choreographer, and dance critic Hezy Leskly was born in Israel in 1952 to Czech Holocaust survivors. Host Marcela Sulak reads from the only collection of Leskly's poetry to be translated into English, Dear Perverts, translated by Adriana Jacobs. Here is the beginning of the poem "I'm six, on a walk with my parents, Saturday late afternoon":

"My father—the hammer poised above the plate, My mother—the snake of love, And I—a girl with a dick; We set out on the path traced with my tongue. When I tried to eat from the plate at the edge of the path, the hammer struck the fingers of my left hand, and the snake of love smiled and commanded: "Shpatzirn!""

Leskly studied photography and dance, and at 22 he settled in the Netherlands, where for seven years he studied multi-media. He returned to Israel in 1980, where for the next ten years he worked as dance critic for a Tel Aviv weekly.

If you want to hear more Leskly, come to Bar-Ilan University on Monday, May 30, where you can hear Adriana Jacobs read these translations at the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing international conference.

Texts: "I am Six, Traveling with My Parents, Late Saturday Afternoon"; "Biography of the Deputy Manager of a Brush Factory" - Poetry International Rotterdam "The"; "Reuben and I" - The Ilanot Review

Music: Yehoram Gaon - Yesh Makom Ronen Shapira - HaHiyuch (lyrics by Hezy Leskly) Yonatan Levital & Hila Ruach - Lo Esa LeParis (lyrics by Hezy Leskly) The Djamchid Sisters - Shiur Ha (lyrics by Hezy Leskly)

Poet, choreographer, and dance critic Hezy Leskly was born in Israel in 1952 to Czech Holocaust survivors. Host Marcela Sulak reads from the only collection of Leskly's poetry to be translated into English, Dear Perverts, translated by Adriana Jacobs. Here is the beginning of the poem "I’m six, on a walk with my parents, Saturday late afternoon":

"My father—the hammer poised above the plate,
My mother—the snake of love,
And I—a girl with a dick;
We set out on the path
traced with my tongue.
When I tried
to eat from the plate
at the edge of the path,
the hammer struck the fingers
of my left hand,
and the snake of love smiled and commanded: “Shpatzirn!”"

Leskly studied photography and dance, and at 22 he settled in the Netherlands, where for seven years he studied multi-media. He returned to Israel in 1980, where for the next ten years he worked as dance critic for a Tel Aviv weekly.

If you want to hear more Leskly, come to Bar-Ilan University on Monday, May 30, where you can hear Adriana Jacobs read these translations at the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing international conference.

Texts:
"I am Six, Traveling with My Parents, Late Saturday Afternoon"; "Biography of the Deputy Manager of a Brush Factory" - Poetry International Rotterdam
"The"; "Reuben and I" - The Ilanot Review

Music:
Yehoram Gaon - Yesh Makom
Ronen Shapira - HaHiyuch (lyrics by Hezy Leskly)
Yonatan Levital & Hila Ruach - Lo Esa LeParis (lyrics by Hezy Leskly)
The Djamchid Sisters - Shiur Ha (lyrics by Hezy Leskly)

Host Marcela Sulak reads an excerpt from David Grossman's most recent novel, Falling Out of Time, which is partly a folk tale, partly a play, and partly a novel in verse. In the story, a man known as the "walking man" sets off in search of his dead son, pacing in ever-widening circles around his village and picking up other villagers who've lost their children along the way, like a Pied Piper of bereavement.

"TOWN CHRONICLER'S WIFE: As they commingle, so two rivers flow into my confluence. I did not know, not this way, that life in all its fullness is lived only there, in borderland. It is as though I never yet have lived, as though all things that happened to me never really were, until you—

WALKING MAN: And he is dead. I understand, almost, the meaning of the sounds: The boy is dead. I recognize these words as holding truth. He is dead, he is dead. But his death, his death is not dead."

Falling Out of Time can be said to be a strange sort of sequel to Grossman's previous book, To the End of the Land, which we featured on the podcast in April 2015. Grossman was working on the final draft of that book when his son, Uri, was killed on the last day of the Second Lebanon War.

On May 29 at Bar-Ilan's Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing Conference, Grossman will read from "Falling out of Time," and Marcela will interview him. The event is free and open to the public.

Text: Falling Out of Time by David Grossman. Translated by Jessica Cohen, Vintage International, 2014.

Music: Buttering Trio - What Is Madness Ernest Bloch - Schelomo (from Rhapsodie Hebraique) Max Bruch - Kol Nidrei, Op. 47

Host Marcela Sulak reads an excerpt from David Grossman's most recent novel, Falling Out of Time, which is partly a folk tale, partly a play, and partly a novel in verse. In the story, a man known as the "walking man" sets off in search of his dead son, pacing in ever-widening circles around his village and picking up other villagers who've lost their children along the way, like a Pied Piper of bereavement.

"TOWN CHRONICLER’S WIFE: As they commingle, so two rivers flow into my confluence. I did not know, not this way, that life in all its fullness is lived only there, in borderland. It is as though I never yet have lived, as though all things  that happened to me never really were, until you—

WALKING MAN: And he is dead. I understand, almost, the meaning of the sounds: The boy is dead. I recognize these words as holding truth. He is dead, he is dead. But his death, his death is not dead."

Falling Out of Time can be said to be a strange sort of sequel to Grossman's previous book, To the End of the Land, which we featured on the podcast in April 2015. Grossman was working on the final draft of that book when his son, Uri, was killed on the last day of the Second Lebanon War.

On May 29 at Bar-Ilan’s Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing Conference, Grossman will read from "Falling out of Time," and Marcela will interview him. The event is free and open to the public.

Text:
Falling Out of Time by David Grossman. Translated by Jessica Cohen, Vintage International, 2014.

Music:
Buttering Trio - What Is Madness
Ernest Bloch - Schelomo (from Rhapsodie Hebraique)
Max Bruch - Kol Nidrei, Op. 47