Do not miss the books Israel today

Small World / Dror Burstein (Babylon)

"I have lived in my current apartment in Tel Aviv for 20 years. 20 years of partnership with cockroaches. Their room is the size of a refrigerator and the height between the bottom of the refrigerator and the floor. From time to time I take one of them out into the yard."

Dror Burstein, one of the most interesting writers, looks at the tiny lives of insects with love and wonder.

He learns from them the secrets of existence, and along the way also the secrets of man.

"Little World" is like a mirror book for one of Burstein's latest books, "Man in Space", which dealt with the endless spaces of the cosmos and continues the line of focusing on animals, after devoting books to birds and bats.

Burstein finds a common denominator for insects and stars - both are at the edge of the gaze.

From the largest to the smallest.

To him, insects and stars are among the most mysterious and common things in the world.

The quote at the beginning shows Burstein's ability to pity every creature and see his face, meaning the treasure of life inherent in him.

Through literary passages and delicate observations of life movements, the author weaves gothic texts full of beauty - about the cicada, the fly, the flea, the wasp, the ant and more.

For Burstein the insect is a source of magic, a creature that revolves around carrying all the weight of possible mythology.

The little creatures allow Burstein to expand his consciousness, to open it to areas hidden from the eye and heart.

It is the writing, the giving of the words, that presents the ability of the gaze to focus on hidden sounds, to glorify the obvious that is trampled underfoot.

Burstein has a poetic look at the present, which allows him to draw the line between the infinite cosmos and the tiny and vulnerable insect and find between them a whole world of life.

To understand the animal Burstein reads poems, stories and theoretical and religious texts.

Literature completes the pixels of every animal swarming the earth.

She manages to reveal the hidden within them.

Burstein is a sensitive creator and reader, who manages to illuminate repulsive creatures, in a delicate, original and magical work.

"Every insect," he writes, "is like a spectacular handkerchief from the magic hat of the world."

Elad Nevo

Two friends and poisoning / Alfred Dublin, from German: Nitza Ben-Ari (Penn)

In 1923 the Berlin newspapers stormed after two young women conspired to poison their husbands;

One succeeded and her husband died - the other did not.

Alfred Dublin, one of the greats of modernism of the early 20th century, dives into the case and tells with a sharp clarity the sequence of events - from the wedding, through the routine of violence and rape, the failed escape attempts, the alliance between the two women, to the choice of "female way to kill" - In rat poison.

Dublin's writing here is even more subdued than the feverish eruption of "Berlin, Alexanderplatz," one of the masterpieces of modernism, published a few years later, in 1929.

But his restraint is charged with tremendous power.

While he outlines the wider circles of the case, the domestic and social violence, the despair and poverty and the patriarchal structures from which there is no way out, he argues the text with immense centripetal force, which draws him in to the murder which is almost inevitable and yet futile.

Attached to this text in this edition are authentic graphological and psychiatric opinions instructive, which today are called perspiration, and provide a shaky picture of a world that has many forms of violence, of which murder is just one.

Evil Memories of a Street Child / Mansour a-Suwaim, Western: Ilana Hamerman (with an employee)

Bunches of homeless street children roam the large metropolis of Khartoum, the capital of Sudan.

One of them, a mower, dies from his mother and remains dependent on others - literally dependent, because both his legs are injured and the others carry him on their backs from place to place.

But he does not burden them but an asset, because his disability annoys the hearts of the people and opens their hearts and pockets.

This is not a story based on the bitterness of fate.

Kashi tells in the first person, in writing full of vitality, how he managed to rise from this sad starting point, while pretending to be a saint with magical abilities, who knows how to whisper spells and heal medicines.

The Sudanese writer al-Suwaim, born in 1970 and living with his family in Khartoum, wrote the book following his childhood ties to a group of homeless children, known in Sudanese slang as "shamasa".

The book is Ilana Hamerman's first Western translation, having translated dozens of books from European languages.

Hillel / Nadav Liniel (Pardes)

Ten years separate Nadav Liniel's debut book from Hillel, his second book.

During this decade, a large, literal book of poems swelled and embroidered for him: large on the one hand, and containing great poetry on the other.

"Hillel" can be thought of not as a book, but as a library - a wide, multicolored and incredibly rich work.

The book opens with a shaky and unique cycle of poems called "Electricity", which boldly describes "the days when I was and was not", days when the poet was treated for electric shocks: "days when I asked for my soul".

The sharp descriptions of standing in front of the "surge of electricity" strike the reader in silence and shock.

Later in the book, completely different songs appear: delicate love songs, almost minimalist nature songs in the style of Japanese haiku ("Under the snow / Promising the grass", or "The tree opens in it / Open a woodpecker") and a variety of "Corresponding" songs, in which the learned poet writes. The New Testament, Greek mythology and the greats of world and Hebrew literature.

From the songs emerges a powerful and delicate song voice that is both aesthetic and tight, but also wild and broken.

Sharb Rishon / Dori Manor (Nine Souls)

Dori Manor's illustrator was published about two years after the publication of his book of poems "One Soul After You", and although Manor quotes from his autobiography, it is intriguing to read his writing about his childhood in Tel Aviv, his parents, music and books that changed his life, his first sexual discoveries and of course First, its crystallization as a creator - in prose that is not subject to rhythm or melody.

This does not mean, of course, that Manor's writing is not musical or fancy.

She does, as he himself testifies, at the end of an anecdote describing how he rolled as a child, in his mother's office in the "Department of Defense Security", inventing code names for operations of the defense establishment ("Niger Honey", "Peace Sukkah" and "Nose Szold", for example).

The words became thicker and thicker inside him, "a fetus whose cells are splitting, maturing, becoming textured, that is, text ... tissues with volume and resonance, facial features and character, which also began, in turn, to shape reality, shape its boundaries and silence it in their huge resonant box That's how literature began. "

Manor, faithful to the role he took on from his youth - of one who sifts inwardly the world's sensory experiences to turn them into words - combines well with descriptions of emotion, for example when describing his mother singing him lullabies, and delving into the meaning and aesthetic quality of texts he met.

It is not surprising, then, that his book, so personal, also features, among others, Leah Goldberg and Shlonsky and Aaron Ashman, Francis Bacon, Caravaggio and Lori Anderson.

The sounds and colors of these were as intense to him as the sights in the butcher shop on Dizengoff Street or the horror he felt in front of the pediatrician and the elderly librarian.

"Sharav Rishon" may not be a field in adolescence, but it ends too soon and it is to be hoped that Manor is already working on the next volume.

Publishers / Itai Aharon Ziv (Aharon Laor)

Even after generations of progress and development, dealing with a mental disorder still remains a taboo, a sign of Cain that the contestant feels he carries on his forehead.

"Publishing" combines texts by 11 contestants who tell their personal story in the first person, and opens the door to a life that is usually hidden from shame.

The numbers boldly recount the events that led to the outbreak of the disease and its consequences.

Thus the reader is exposed to different ways of dealing with extreme situations, and to a strong desire to continue living.

Among others: a successful hitchhiker who has experienced hypomania attacks, and in an attempt to be healed leaves the country and becomes a Buddhist monk;

A yeshiva settler who sees himself as the Messiah;

And a young man whose parents were estranged from him, became addicted to drugs in response and suffered from psychotic seizures.

They all reveal their difficulties and forms of coping with inspiring courage.

"I'm beginning to understand about meats that a wound is not necessarily supposed to freeze completely," Gadge writes with me.

"Scars remain that one learns to live with, to cry for, to learn to make room for this pain and go hand in hand with it."

Most of the stories criticize the mental health system in Israel, and the article at the end of the book presents an alternative approach to treating mental disorders - an open dialogue approach that allows treatment outside hospitals, along with articles examining the current mental health system and possible alternatives.

The book's editor, Itai Aharon Ziv, whose personal story also appears in the file, suggests looking at psychosis as a developmental spiritual step.

The collapse of consciousness can allow a person to rise above normal thought patterns and produce a new movement in his life.

In his eyes one must look in amazement at the contender of the soul, an astonishment that will make it possible to shout the pain and unleash his dreams, instead of suppressing the one that erupts within him.

This is a rather radical concept, which is accompanied by quite a few restrictions and clarifications, but in the end inspiring stories are presented here, ones that give a new meaning to the word "freedom".

Submissive Soul - Russian Stories and Novels

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The book brings 16 stories and novellas of some of the great Russian prosaicists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Included here are some of the most well-known and beloved Russian writers - Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Chekhov, Gorky - along with others who are less well-known in Israel but no less interesting (Gershin, Coprin, Andreev).

Realistic writing, which has appeared in Israeli literature in recent decades mainly through personal-family psychology, is revealed in these works, which were written at a time when it was still in the process of its crystallization, in much more varied forms.

The stories are accompanied by an excellent introduction by Vladimir Paperni (though in my opinion it is better to keep it to the end of the reading), in which he describes the fierce debates that have taken place in the past between Russian writers and critics about the right direction to take. Round and complex for writing that emphasizes the accidental and undecipherable in human nature.

In this respect, one can read in a book as in a time travel to a time when the realistic novel was still a young and dynamic genre full of potentials, far from the tired and exhausted realistic writing of today.

The Wild Song: Style and Rhythm in New Hebrew Poetry / Uzi Shavit (United Kibbutz)

"The Wild Song" is a new file, which combines literary articles by Prof. Uzi Shavit, published on various platforms from the 1970s to the 2000s.

Shavit, Professor Emeritus of Hebrew Literature at Tel Aviv University, who served for more than 30 years as CEO of the United Kibbutz, was most involved in the prosody (study of forms) of modern Hebrew poetry, and Shavit's articles and essays incorporated in this file are a delight to any interested In these areas.

With astonishing scholarship, but also with great clarity, Shavit sails in his articles over decades of Hebrew poetry, from the days of the Enlightenment, through Bialik and Tchernichovsky, through Batch and Shlonsky, to Alterman and Leah Goldberg to Nathan Zach and Yehuda Amichai.

His fascinating articles direct the spotlight on poetic phenomena that few are familiar with today, such as weight, rhyme and rhythm, through which he examines both broad phenomena in modern Hebrew poetry (the style of 1920s poetry or the history of Hebrew yambi weight) and individual works, which are illuminating. Eyes, such as Bialik's "In the City of Killing," Tchernichovsky's "Lullaby" (Nietzsche Shadows) and even Agnon's "Farnheim."

The Horrible Sadness Song / Tamar Tessler (two)

"Once, when she was walking with her father on the street, people would turn their heads after him, point at him excitedly, send a friendly hand to his shoulder and stop him ... Now no one walks up to him. "As if there is a chance in the world that her little body will be able to stabilize her father's huge body ... is this? This is him? Thus, in a short scene that takes place in the first pages of "The Horrible Sadness Song", Tamar Tessler presents the framework within which the story takes place: Bella, the 16-year-old daughter of a well-known TV broadcaster, hides her terminal illness because of which he disappeared from the screen. Book.

This is not the only secret in her life - she was born from her father's affair out of wedlock, so she was hidden and the other family was hidden from her.

During the novel she will try to decipher the secrets, ventilate them, not let them, she says, rot her body, but as a teenage girl, she will also have her own experiences and slowly form an identity that does not depend only on her parents' drama.

This is Tessler's first novel, and while it tends to be sentimental (perhaps because it's based on her life story) and somewhat exaggerated in descriptions, it also has a fascinating freshness to it.

Jerusalem, where the story takes place, is surprisingly exciting, Bella's adolescence is sharply presented as an emotional and intellectual obstacle course, as is her father's past, which Bella tries to put together like a jigsaw puzzle to understand him and herself.

Dono and Hibat, Frog Night / Tamar Hochstetter, illustrations: Einat Tzarfati (Kinneret)

At the end of the street where Dono and Hibat lived was a large mansion, surrounded by a wall and dense vegetation, and in the middle of its garden was a pool.

From the outset it is clear that the house is different from all the other houses, and maybe even magical, and in any case it is going to be an adventure time.

It is therefore not surprising to find that another family of them all lives there - the Mitterrand family, whom none of the neighborhood children have ever seen, as the family members enter and leave their estate in a large silver car.

And the adventure does come: when in the summer the magnificent house is empty (are the parents divorced? And maybe they are just vacationing in Africa?), Dono's parents go for a night in a B&B, and Hibat, who rehearsed for a secret pantomime show, went for a walk with the dog and decided to join Dono. ".

"Frog Night" is the third book in the "Dono" adventure series, written by Tamar Hochstetter, and is no less endearing than its predecessors.

Hochstetter, author, author of children's books and one of the founders of the journal "The Book", describes the world of childhood from the inside.

Its protagonists are driven and act by the power of utterly childlike logic, and curiosity, impulses, fears, annoyances, and the way they decipher the world are completely coherent — so much so that here and there, when a parent or other adult penetrates the occurrence, their comments and responses require decipherment.

To this logic my children greatly contribute an illustration of the wonderful Einat Tzarfati, who writes children's books herself.

Hochstetter writes wonderfully about the initial experiences of its protagonists - who, by the way, are both independent and imaginative boy and girl - so that at first glance, the pool "vibrates with bluish coolness, and almost invisible waves hover in it" or when Dono tries to capture a frog, "he looked at his hand should. Not to be disgusted, he told her. "

The adventure, of course, is very complicated, and includes villains, threats, punishments and demonstrations of courage, and as promised - also frogs.

Women in Sports: 50 Champion Athletes Who Won /

Writing and Illustrations: Rachel Ignatovsky, English: Hamutal Ben Dov (Bear to Know)

It is rare to find children's literature that deals with sports in 74 years of existence as a country, and even more rare to find children's literature that deals with sportswomen.

"Women in Sports" is covered in methodological intellectuality, which can sometimes go over the head of the average reader, but let us not be confused: it is an elite children's literature that gives depth and mainly treats 50 international athletes who have made history in their field.

The fact that such a successful book is translated from English actually proves its necessity.

The book is characterized by a rhythmic and unique language, although it combines well-known and lesser-known stories about the history of women's sports.

At times, there is a sense of insistence on conveying empowering and feminist messages, which give it a didactic aspect, but still reading it at primary school age is enriching and recommended.

The translation is a nice part of a genre of writing about sports, such as the personal guide of judoka Jordan Jerby, "Secrets of a Champion" (Crown) which was published this year, and Arik Zeevi's book, "Noa the Little Warrior" (Kinneret Zmora Dvir).

Hopefully this is just the beginning.

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