I Recommend The Art Of

Of Course My Books Are Translated Into Many Languages. I Have Here, In My Home, Translations On My Shelf Of My Books Into Forty-five Different Languages. Almost None Of Them I Can Read. I Can Read Only The English Editions. But, I Know That A Translation Of A Work Of Literature Is Like Playing A Violin Concerto On The Piano. You Can Do This. You Can Do This Very Successfully On One Strict Condition: Never Try To Force The Piano To Produce The Sounds Of The Violin. This Will Be Grotesque. So, Different Musical Instruments Provide For Different Music.

A Little More Than A Hundred Years Ago, "tel Aviv" Was Not A City. It Was A Title Of A Novel Written By An Author. The "return To Zion" Was A Name Of Another Novel. There Was A Bookshelf. There Was No Country. There Was No State. There Was No Nation. There Was No Physical Jewish Reality In This Country.

Literature Is About Telling Stories.

No Human Being Really Begins On The Day Which Appears In The Passport As Their Date Of Birth. We All Begin Much Much Much Earlier.

The Revival Of Hebrew, As A Spoken Language, Is A Fascinating Story, Which I'm Afraid I Cannot Squeeze Into A Few Sentences. But, Let Me Give You A Clue. Think About Elizabethan English, Where The Entire English Language Behaved Pretty Much Like Molten Lava, Like A Volcano In Mid-eruption. Modern Hebrew Has Some Things In Common With Elizabethan English. It Is Being Reshaped And It's Expanding Very Rapidly In Various Directions. This Is Not To Say That Every One Of Us Israeli Writers Is A William Shakespeare, But There Is A Certain Similarity To Elizabethan English.