Khirbet Khizeh - Softcover

Yizhar, S.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 9659012594 ISBN 13: 9789659012596

Publisher: Ibis Edition, 2007

Synopsis

This 1949 novella about the violent expulsion of Palestinian villagers by the Israeli army has long been considered a modern Hebrew masterpiece, and it has also given rise to fierce controversy over the years. Published just months after the end of the 1948 war, Khirbet Khizeh (the "kh" pronounced like the "ch" in "Bach") was an immediate sensation when it first appeared. Thousands of Israeli Jews rushed to read it, the critics began to argue about it, and a Palestinian journalist in Nablus described it as a sign that the Israeli army had a conscience and that peace was possible.
Since then, the book has continued to challenge and disturb. The various debates it has prompted would themselves make Khirbet Khizeh worth reading, but the novella is much more than a vital historical document: it is also a great work of art. Yizhar's haunting, lyrical style and charged registration of the landscape are in many ways as startling as his wrenchingly honest view of one of Israel's defining moments. Despite its international reputation, the book has never before been translated into English. Nicholas de Lange and Yaacob Dweck's expert rendering captures with grace Yizhar's elusive prose, while David Shulman's afterword makes the book's contemporary relevance powerfully clear. Khirbet Khizeh is an absolute must for anyone interested in Middle Eastern literature and history.

About this title

Review:

`Extraordinary ... a tribute to the power of critical thought to register the injustices of history' --Guardian

'Exhilarating ... How often can you say of a harrowing, unquiet book that it makes you wrestle with your soul' --The Times

'A mesmerising and prophetic testimony that unfolds with a magnificent, biblical simplicity' --Independent

`Poetic, anguished and uncompromising ... the lyricism of the writing has been beautifully captured' --Times Literary Supplement

'[A] luminous account ... Khirbet Khizet remains painfully relevant, and the moral questioning lives on'
--Ian McEwan

About the Author:

S. Yizhar was the pen name of Yizhar Smilansky who taught education at the Hebrew University for many years.

About this edition

• Publisher: Ibis Edition
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 9659012594
• ISBN 13: 9789659012596
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 131