Every week this summer, K. brings you a selection of texts that have already appeared in our pages and have been brought together around a few key themes. This week, we invite you to (re)discover K.’s literary texts, with pieces by Moshe Sakal, Berl Kotlerman, Avishag Zafrani, Julia Christ, Stéphane Bou, Maxime Decout and Danny Trom.
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The Author Who Ran Over His Critic
- Moshe Sakal – Published December 16th, 2021
First he heard a thud. Then he felt a dull blow and the handlebars crumpled into his ribs. He knew he’d hit someone—a male, fair-skinned, slightly curly-haired pedestrian. But he had absolutely no idea that the person he’d hit was a literary critic. He’d had the opportunity to run over all sorts of people with his electric bike on the sidewalks of Tel Aviv, but never a literary critic.
“Bite of Scorpion”, de Nina Tokhtaman Valetova, Wikiart © Nina Tokhtaman Valetova © Fair Use >>> Read Moshe Sakal’s text </ =
Longing
- Berl Kotlerman – Published June 8, 2023
“Longing” was first published in Yiddish in the New York online magazine Yiddish branzhe. It is the epilogue of a novel in Yiddish that Ber Kotlerman, professor of Yiddish language and literature at Bar-Ilan University, will soon publish with the Swedish publisher Olniansky Tekst. Ber Kotlerman, who was born in Irkutsk in 1971, has the distinction of having grown up in Birobidzhan. The “autonomous Jewish region” founded in 1934 as part of the USSR is the backdrop to his book.
Hanoch Handel Futerpas (Lieberman), “The Boers of the Waldheimer Road eat meat” (1929) >>> Read Berl Kotlerman’s text
Plugging the hole – On “The Appointment” by Katharina Volckmer
- Julia Christ – Published
The Appointment, the first novel by Katharina Volckmer, a German writer exiled in London, has dazzled critics and English-speaking audiences[1]. The book, which tells the story of a woman’s attempt to change her sex, questions the possibility of such a gesture, not in the absolute, but for the German woman who is performing it. Resolutely provocative, mixing sexual fantasies about Hitler and sharp insights into our contemporary society. Julia Christ gives us her reading of Katharina Volckmer’s provocative and satirical parable, over which the shadow of Philip Roth, Woody Allen and Thomas Bernhardt hovers.
Keith Haring, « Flying Cock ».
The Memory Monster: An Interview With Yishaï Sarid
- Stéphane Bou – Published February 24,
Published a year ago, The Memory Monster (Restless Books) is Yishai Sarid’s fourth book, after two crime novels and a novel set in a futuristic dystopia. This penultimate novel, The Third, imagined the destruction of Tel Aviv and Haifa, an endeavor to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem and Israel’s transformation into a theocratic kingdom. The Memory Monster is an equally provocative and disturbing story that questions the relationship of Israelis to Europe and the memory of the Holocaust.
The Memory Monster, Cover photograph of the French Edition [fragment] (c) Allison Trentelman
>>> Read Stéphane Bou’s text
Grey-eyed-Kafka
- Avishag Zafrani – Published July 7,
Kafka’s art is accessible again. Hundreds of his drawings are now available, free, from the National Library of Israel, where the Kafka Archive–a collection of his work saved by his friend and collaborator Max Brod–remains to this day. The only disappointment, it would seem, is that there is no unpublished text among these recovered papers. On the other hand, one stresses the number of drawings and illustrations, which must then have a greater meaning than expected…
Franz Kafka – Letter to his sister Ottla, December 11, 1918: “Panorama of my existence” © NLI >>> Read Avishag Zafrani’s text
Albert Cohen, Novelist of Totality
- Maxime Decout – Published October 22,
Albert Cohen is most often considered a French writer, though he was born an Ottoman citizen and became a naturalized Swiss citizen. He is the author of a masterpiece that brought him fame late in life: Belle du Seigneur (1968). He died on October 17, 1981, forty years ago. This anniversary is an opportunity to revisit in K., thanks to Maxime Decout — the author of Albert Cohen. Les Fictions de la judéité — the figure of the man who was the representative of the Jewish Agency for Palestine before devoting himself essentially to his work, in which lyricism and an extraordinary narrative invention are combined – not to mention a powerful reflection on Jewishness and Judaism.
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- Danny Trom – Published November 10,
The impromptu arrival of the Netanyahu family one day in the winter of 1959 under the roof of Ruben Blum’s family causes the life of the young history professor at a provincial university in New York State to falter. But how can we understand this explosive event that American novelist Joshua Cohen stages without giving us the key?
Announcement of Benzion Netanyahu’s death in the New York Times on April 30, 2012.
Notes
| 1 | The Appointment. A novel. Fitzcarraldo Editions, London, 2020. |
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