SIX ISRAELI NOVELLAS
edited by GershoN Shaked & translated by Bilu Dalya & Philip Simpson & Marganit Weinberger-Rotman
A fine collection of long stories written over an approximate quarter-century (1965-89) by several of Israel’s most prominent writers. The best known are Aharon Appelfeld, whose “In the Isles of St. George” is another of his several transpositions of the legend of the Wandering Jew (this time in the form of an embattled black marketeer), and David Grossman, whose early (1980) tale, “Yanni on the Mountain,” sets a complex array of political and sexual allegiances and betrayals during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Of the writers lesser known here (among them Ruth Almog and Benjamin Tammuz), the standout contributor is Yehudit Hendel, whose precise portrayal (“Small Change”) of a tradition-burdened woman in thrall to her domineering father, depicts in stunning microcosm the tensions at work in an “old world” stubbornly resistant to change. An attractive volume, and a very rewarding one.