Israel in Translation

This week's episode introduces a genre called "Auto-reality," a term coined by Rana Werbin to describe her first book, Life Is Good. This book is a collection of excerpts from the author's real-life journal, which she disassembled and reorganized to create a narrative of her choice.

Rana Werbin is an Israeli writer, editor, actor, and translator. The book is translated by Yardenne Greenspan and Maya Klein.

Text:

Rana Werbin, Life is Good. Translated by Yardenne Greenspan and Maya Klein. Amazon Digital Services LLC, 2012.

Aharon Appelfeld passed away just over a year ago. He was one of Israel's most well known authors abroad, and one of the generation that came of age around the same time as the founding of the State of Israel.

Appelfeld would say that in order to be a serious writer you need to have a routine. For years his routine had been to write with a Biro pen on sheets of ordinary white paper in the café at Ticho House, in Jerusalem. It was there that Alain Elkann interviewed him for The Paris Review in 2014.

Text:

Aharon Appelfeld. "The Art of Fiction" Interviewed by Alain Elkann. The Paris Review ISSUE 210, FALL 2014

On this episode, we continue our focus on the new "Crisis" issue of The Ilanot Review, which came out this month, and which was edited by guest editor Adriana X. Jacobs, and our very own Marcela Shulak.

Marcela features some of her favorite poems, which listeners can read along—or explore other poems—at Ilanotreview.com

Text:

"Banruptcy Series" by Ron Dahan, translated by Nadavi Noked

"On the day of the blood" and "Unveiling the Metaphor" by Sharron Hass, translated by Tsipi Keller

On this episode, Marcela features some of her favorite poems from the recent poetry issue of The Ilanot Review, which has just gone live this week. Listeners can read along—or explore other poems—at Ilanotreview.com

Text:

"All Our Planes," by Moshe Ben Yakir, translated by Joanna Chen

"The Anteaters" by Roy Chicky Arad, translated by Yavni Bar Yam

"Bread" by Yudit Shahar, translated by Aviya Kushner

This week, the podcast widens its focus and steps beyond our boundaries for a moment to acknowledge the civil war in Syria through the Arabic writings of Golan Haji, translated by Stephen Watts.

Haji is originally from the Kurdish town of Amouda, on the border of Turkey. The excerpted essay was written five and a half years ago, when the Syrian war was well into its second year.

Text:

A Note on Syrian Poetry & Autumn here is magical and vast, Golan Haji, translated by Stephen Watts. Words Without Borders.

A Tree Whose Name I don't Know, by Golan Haji, translated by Stephen Watts. A Midsummer Night's Press, 2017.

This podcast is not for the faint of heart — we're featuring the poetry of Noam Partom this week, and this poetry calls out sexual predators and chides the poet for allowing men to define her sense of worth. Partom isn't afraid to say what is largely left unsaid, out of politeness, out of the distasteful thing it is to name what we know exists but which we leave unsaid.

Text:

Noam Partom, "Chaim Nachman Bialik" translated by Danny Neyman & "Women's Talk" translated by David Lockard and Danny Neyman

Music:

Songs from A Winter Funeral Soundtrack by Yonatan Canaan

This podcast is the second in our two-part long-good-bye to the extraordinary writer, Amos Oz, who passed away on Friday, Dec. 28.

Marcela provides a long excerpt from Dear Zealots: Letters from a Divided Land, translated by Jessica Cohen. The excerpt comes from the essay "Many Lights, Not one Light."

Text: Amos Oz, Dear Zealots: Letters from a Divided Land. Translated by Jessica Cohen. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018.

When Nadia Adina Rose describes her art, she might also be describing her poetry. In her artist statement section of her website, she notes the importance of memory and childhood imagination in her work:

Reality is also the space of memory, which takes us back to our childhood – when we used to be free of the banal, limiting experience; when imagination and the feeling of surprise evoked by objects formed the basis of our perception. In childhood, everything is "as if": the picture on the blanket cover comes alive; the bedsheet flows down like a waterfall; the pillows turn into a snowy mountain; the spiral of an electric cable becomes the reflection of the sun in water.

These transformations presuppose a certain duality in the world of things, which exists simultaneously on the mundane, everyday level – and on a playful, fanciful level, which corresponds to the structure of a fairy tale.

Text:

Nadia Adina Rose Website, artist statement and poems translated by Linda Zisquite and Irit Sela

Haaretz Review by Shlomit Cohen-Asif, translated by Lisa Katz, in Poetry International Rotterdam

This episode is dedicated to Amos Oz, who passed away on Friday, Dec. 28, after a short battle of cancer at the age of 79. We'll feature his latest book, Dear Zealots: Letters from a Divided Land, which was published in November in Jessica Cohen's English translation.

Text:

Amos Oz, Dear Zealots: Letters from a Divided Land. Translated by Jessica Cohen. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018.