The Genizah at the House of Shepher (ISBN 1592640850, HC, $19.95), Tamar Yellin's first novel, received the Ribalow Prize 2006 and was shortlisted for the Wingate Prize. Moreover, in January 2007 it was named a finalist for the international Sami Rohr Prize for emerging Jewish writers, the largest prize for Jewish writing in the world.
Tamar Yellin's collection, Kafka in Bronteland and other stories (ISBN 1592641539, PB, $14.95), was longlisted for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and received the Reform Judaism Prize 2006. Our Holocaust by Amir Gutfreund (ISBN 1592641393, HB, $24.95) - a Barnes & Noble Discover Winner was also called a finalist for the international Sami Rohr Prize for emerging Jewish writers, the largest prize for Jewish writing in the world. Emuna Elon's debut, IF YOU AWAKEN LOVE (ISBN: 1-59264-145-8, PB, $14.95) has just been awarded a starred review in next week's Kirkus Reviews. The full review is posted below. We'll be advertising this title as one of our Spring focus titles nationally later in the season! S. Yizhar's PRELIMINARIES (ISBN 1-59264-190-3, HB, $24.95) has been also awarded a starred review in next week's Kirkus Reviews. The full text of the review is below. We'll be adding this to our national advertising later in the Spring. IF YOU AWAKEN LOVE Author: Elon, Emuna Review Date: FEBRUARY 15, 2007 Publisher:Toby Press Pages: 240 Price (paperback): $14.95 Publication Date: 5/1/2007 0:00:00 ISBN: 1-59264-145-8 ISBN (paperback): 1-59264-145-8 Category: FICTION A star is assigned to books of unusual merit, determined by the editors of Kirkus Reviews. A love story in which the personal is, inevitably, political. Early on, Maya Dror announces to her mother, Shlomtzion, that she is engaged to be married in three weeks to Ariel Berman, son of the prominent rabbi Yair Berman. Maya, however, has never known of her mothers past life: that a long time ago, Shlomtzion and Yair had been each other's immortal beloved, that each had a common dream for the future (to establish an ideal society) and that Shlomtzion's life had been shattered by a revered rabbi's refusal to bless the engagement. The parallel engagement of their children offers Shlomtzion an opportunity to reflect on what might have been and on how both she and Yair dealt with the trauma of their forced separation. Their relationship plays out against the historical drama of the Six Day War and ends just prior to the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, so the cultural currents of contemporary Israel underlie much of the action and of the characters' political orientations. Maya, for example, has a commitment to live in a "new" settlement and is contemptuous of both Rabin and of the Oslo Accords, while Shlomtzion has turned from orthodoxy to secularism. Part of the novel revolves around her rediscovery of the possibilities of commitment to love and to religion. In her internal monologues addressed to Yair, Shlomtzion raises the major philosophical questions of the novel: "What does life want from us. . . . How long can a person meander through the maze that existence puts him in?" And the answer that emerges lies in the mystery of existence itself: that we decide "to come into the world in spite of everything, to be created despite how much easier it is not to bother." Beautifully lyrical, with philosophical reflections on love and fate, family and politics, culture and history. PRELIMINARIES Author: Yizhar, S. Review Date: FEBRUARY 15, 2007 Publisher:Toby Press Pages: 302 Price (hardback): $24.95 Publication Date: 5/1/2007 0:00:00 ISBN: 1-59264-190-3 ISBN (hardback): 1-59264-190-3 Category: FICTION A star is assigned to books of unusual merit, determined by the editors of Kirkus Reviews. From the late Israeli author (19162006), a novel short on plot and character, long on the Awareness of Things; first published in 1992 and now translated into English. Herein fall the shadows of Joyce (A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man), Faulkner (As I Lay Dying) and Woolf (The Waves), for, like those masters, Yizhar (Midnight Convoy and Other Stories, 1969, etc.) is preoccupied with the way the mind works, the way it apprehends objects and experiences the world. Given such a preoccupation with subjective states, it's not surprising that the novel subordinates setting and plot to the contours of consciousness, and yet, over time, we gradually become aware of characters and of the space they inhabit. The novel consists of a series of long interior monologues, beginning with a child's earliest memories of his father, a farmer and "tiller of the soil," plowing a field in Palestine around the year 1917. His meditations on connection to family and to the land are interrupted by a vicious attack by wasps and by his father's subsequent panicked attempts to get him medical attention. This movement from philosophical introspection to personal crisis provides the story's rhythm. We learn most of the story through a series of concatenated monologues in which we move from the child's initial terror to his awakening (and, to him, bewildering) sexual awareness in early adolescence. A major theme involves the narrator's growing sense of place and his concern with renewal of the land. Early in life, he learns about despair: "This land is given to desperate people . . . to truly desperate people. And they all compete to see who is the most truly desperate," but his ultimate epiphany is the sweet awareness that "everything here is provisional . . . and you bathe your heart in the certainty that everything will turn out well." Truly a novel that will claim your heart. All the best, Isha Smole-Esses The Toby Press PO Box 8531, New Milford CT. 06776-8531 Tel: 203 830 8508 Cell: 203 830 8509 Fax: 203 830 8512 Messages and opinions expressed on Hasafran are those of the individual author and are not necessarily endorsed by the Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL) =========================================================== Submissions for Ha-Safran, send to: Hasafran @ lists.acs.ohio-state.edu SUBscribing, SIGNOFF commands send to: Listproc @ lists.acs.ohio-state.edu Questions, problems, complaints, compliments;-) send to: galron.1 @ osu.edu Ha-Safran Archives: Current: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/maillist.html History: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/history.html AJL HomePage http://www.JewishLibraries.org
