Description
'Luminous' Ian McEwan 'Astonishing' Economist 'Mesmerising and prophetic' Arifa Akbar, Independent It's 1948 and the villagers of Khirbet Khizeh are about to be violently expelled from their homes. A young Israeli soldier who is on duty that day finds himself battling on two fronts: with the villagers and, ultimately, with his own conscience. Haunting and heartbreaking, Khirbet Khizeh, now considered a modern Hebrew masterpiece, offers a wrenchingly honest view of one of Israel's defining moments. 'So incendiary and eloquent that one has to put it down every few pages... How often can you say of a harrowing, unquiet book that it makes you wrestle with your soul?' The Times
The sensational and controversial novella about the evacuation of a Palestinian village in 1948, published in the UK for the first time.
About the Author
S. YIZHAR was the pen name of Yizhar Smilansky, born in Rehovot, Palestine in 1916. A longtime member of Knesset for the Mapai (Labor) party, he is perhaps most famous as the author of Khirbet Khizeh and the 1,156-page magnum opus, Days of Tziklag, about the 1948 war. After winning the Israel Prize in 1959, he taught education at the Hebrew University for many years and lapsed into literary silence until 1992, when he published the first of a trilogy of autobiographical novels, Preliminaries. He died in 2006. NICHOLAS DE LANGE, who is professor of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at Cambridge University, has translated many Hebrew novels, most recently Preliminaries by S. Yizhar (2007). YAACOB DWECK has previously translated Haim Sabato's The Dawning of the Day (2006). DAVID SHULMAN teaches Sanskrit and other Indian languages at the Hebrew University. He has published numerous books and is the author of Dark Hope: Working for Peace in Israel and Palestine (2007). Shulman was named a MacArthur Fellow in 1987.
Reviews
Extraordinary ... Khirbet Khizeh is a tribute to the power of critical thought to register the injustices of history ... Khirbet Khizeh is the story which, with the least ambivalence, offers to official Zionist history its strongest, unanswerable, counterpoint. The translation is long overdue. In lyrical, haunting prose - evocatively rendered into English by Nicholas de Lange and Yaacob Dweck - the narrator describes what was done to the Palestinians in 1948 -- Jacqueline Rose * Guardian *
It's subject is so painful, its execution so charged, so wildly beautiful, its moral ambivalence so incendiary and eloquent that one has to put it down every few pages ... the mighty rush of its prose, with its creative syntax, its long, fibrous sentences, its combination of impassioned, unbridled lyricism and colloquial speech, is exhilarating ... How often can you say of a harrowing, unquiet book that it makes you wrestle with your soul -- Neel Mukherjee * The Times *
S. Yizar's classic Khirbet Khizeh is available in a fine miniature new edition ... its original publication in 1949 was a landmark, both historically and linguistically * Jewish Chronicle *
The luminous account of the clearing of an Arab village during the'48 war -- and of a protest that never quite leaves the throat of its narrator as the houses are demolished and the villagers driven from their land. It is a tribute to an open society that this novella was for many years required reading for Israeli schoolchildren. Khirbet Khizet remains painfully relevant, and the moral questioning lives on. -- Ian McEwan * Jerusalem Prize Acceptance Speech *
Yizhar's extraordinary tale narrates the need, and the price, of remembering * Jacqueline Rose *
Years after the tragic events it describes, Khirbet Khizeh retains its disturbing relevance ... Conveying in vivid microcosm the moral ambiguities attending Israel's establishment in 1948, [it] resonates as both historical experience and art * TLS *
The entire novella, canonical in Hebrew literature, has the effect of pointing up how brutally unjust visitations of war inevitably are upon civilian populations, and how brutally coarsened soldiers must become to carry out the "operational orders" that steer, in the sanitized language of the generals and politicians who decide such things from a distance, the broad and heartless missions of armies -- Mark Kamine * The Believer *
There's no false note, no generic anti-war rhetoric in Khirbet, and as long as we continue to kill one another, in the Middle East or elsewhere, Khirbet will retain its poetic relevance * Words Without Borders *
Astonishing * The Economist *
Sixty years on S. Yizhar's Khirbet Khizeh retains its extraordinary power ... No outline can do justice to a narrative that touches the very heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For anyone familiar with the 1948 war but reading Khirbet Khizeh for the first time, the story is both startling and uncanny in its predictive clarity -- Ian Black * Jewish Quarterly *
Written by an Israeli soldier on a sortie to forcibly expel the Palestinian villagers of Khirbet Khizeh during the 1948 war, this mesmerising and prophetic testimony is just as potent today against the backdrop of continuing conflict ...The account unfolds with a magnificent, biblical simplicity, and none of its terrible beauty is lost in this shimmering translation by Nicholas De Lange and Yaacob Dweck -- Arifa Akbar * Independent *
[This] poetic, anguished and uncompromising portrayal of the eviction of an Arab village was based on experience ... the lyricism of the writing has been beautifully captured by Nicolas de Lange and Yaacob Dweck -- Toby Lichtig * Times Literary Supplement *
Book Information
ISBN 9781847083944
Author S Yizhar
Format Paperback
Page Count 128
Imprint Granta Books
Publisher Granta Books
Weight(grams) 106g
Dimensions(mm) 200mm * 130mm * 10mm
The sensational and controversial novella about the evacuation of a Palestinian village in 1948, published in the UK for the first time.
About the Author
S. YIZHAR was the pen name of Yizhar Smilansky, born in Rehovot, Palestine in 1916. A longtime member of Knesset for the Mapai (Labor) party, he is perhaps most famous as the author of Khirbet Khizeh and the 1,156-page magnum opus, Days of Tziklag, about the 1948 war. After winning the Israel Prize in 1959, he taught education at the Hebrew University for many years and lapsed into literary silence until 1992, when he published the first of a trilogy of autobiographical novels, Preliminaries. He died in 2006. NICHOLAS DE LANGE, who is professor of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at Cambridge University, has translated many Hebrew novels, most recently Preliminaries by S. Yizhar (2007). YAACOB DWECK has previously translated Haim Sabato's The Dawning of the Day (2006). DAVID SHULMAN teaches Sanskrit and other Indian languages at the Hebrew University. He has published numerous books and is the author of Dark Hope: Working for Peace in Israel and Palestine (2007). Shulman was named a MacArthur Fellow in 1987.
Reviews
Extraordinary ... Khirbet Khizeh is a tribute to the power of critical thought to register the injustices of history ... Khirbet Khizeh is the story which, with the least ambivalence, offers to official Zionist history its strongest, unanswerable, counterpoint. The translation is long overdue. In lyrical, haunting prose - evocatively rendered into English by Nicholas de Lange and Yaacob Dweck - the narrator describes what was done to the Palestinians in 1948 -- Jacqueline Rose * Guardian *
It's subject is so painful, its execution so charged, so wildly beautiful, its moral ambivalence so incendiary and eloquent that one has to put it down every few pages ... the mighty rush of its prose, with its creative syntax, its long, fibrous sentences, its combination of impassioned, unbridled lyricism and colloquial speech, is exhilarating ... How often can you say of a harrowing, unquiet book that it makes you wrestle with your soul -- Neel Mukherjee * The Times *
S. Yizar's classic Khirbet Khizeh is available in a fine miniature new edition ... its original publication in 1949 was a landmark, both historically and linguistically * Jewish Chronicle *
The luminous account of the clearing of an Arab village during the'48 war -- and of a protest that never quite leaves the throat of its narrator as the houses are demolished and the villagers driven from their land. It is a tribute to an open society that this novella was for many years required reading for Israeli schoolchildren. Khirbet Khizet remains painfully relevant, and the moral questioning lives on. -- Ian McEwan * Jerusalem Prize Acceptance Speech *
Yizhar's extraordinary tale narrates the need, and the price, of remembering * Jacqueline Rose *
Years after the tragic events it describes, Khirbet Khizeh retains its disturbing relevance ... Conveying in vivid microcosm the moral ambiguities attending Israel's establishment in 1948, [it] resonates as both historical experience and art * TLS *
The entire novella, canonical in Hebrew literature, has the effect of pointing up how brutally unjust visitations of war inevitably are upon civilian populations, and how brutally coarsened soldiers must become to carry out the "operational orders" that steer, in the sanitized language of the generals and politicians who decide such things from a distance, the broad and heartless missions of armies -- Mark Kamine * The Believer *
There's no false note, no generic anti-war rhetoric in Khirbet, and as long as we continue to kill one another, in the Middle East or elsewhere, Khirbet will retain its poetic relevance * Words Without Borders *
Astonishing * The Economist *
Sixty years on S. Yizhar's Khirbet Khizeh retains its extraordinary power ... No outline can do justice to a narrative that touches the very heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For anyone familiar with the 1948 war but reading Khirbet Khizeh for the first time, the story is both startling and uncanny in its predictive clarity -- Ian Black * Jewish Quarterly *
Written by an Israeli soldier on a sortie to forcibly expel the Palestinian villagers of Khirbet Khizeh during the 1948 war, this mesmerising and prophetic testimony is just as potent today against the backdrop of continuing conflict ...The account unfolds with a magnificent, biblical simplicity, and none of its terrible beauty is lost in this shimmering translation by Nicholas De Lange and Yaacob Dweck -- Arifa Akbar * Independent *
[This] poetic, anguished and uncompromising portrayal of the eviction of an Arab village was based on experience ... the lyricism of the writing has been beautifully captured by Nicolas de Lange and Yaacob Dweck -- Toby Lichtig * Times Literary Supplement *
Book Information
ISBN 9781847083944
Author S Yizhar
Format Paperback
Page Count 128
Imprint Granta Books
Publisher Granta Books
Weight(grams) 106g
Dimensions(mm) 200mm * 130mm * 10mm
