After a silence of almost 30 years since his Stories of a Plain, Yizhar reasserted his position as the greatest living master of Hebrew prose with Preliminaries. Strongly autobiographical, Preliminaries progresses frame by frame, showing a boy growing up in a Jewish farming community in Palestine and in the young city of Tel
Aviv between the years 1917 and 1930. The boy’s sensual experience, his most primary, embryonic grasp of the world, coalesces with the adult consciousness looking back, a kind of late return to the innermost part of the child. His growing-up is linked to the story of the land of Israel in the early days of Jewish agricultural settlement: the longing to create a new Jew, the harsh existence of the struggling community, the early clashes between Jews and Arabs. Yizhar’s pictures are rich in sensual power, laden with scents and colors. But the real subject of Preliminaries is a child’s discovery, in
confusion, wonder and terror, of the concrete world around him. In resurrecting his childhood in the land of Israel, Yizhar is carrying out a gentle stocktaking of the renewed Jewish society.
Preliminaries has been translated by Nicholas de Lange of Cambridge University, one of today’s
outstanding translators from Hebrew to English. Introduced by Dan Miron.
About the Author
S. YIZHAR (Yizhar Smilansky, 1916-2006) was born in Rehovot, Israel, to a family of Russian immigrants who were members of the Zionist pioneer intelligentsia. He fought in the 1948 War of Independence, was a member of the political parties headed by David Ben Gurion and held a seat in the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament, for 17 years. Yizhar was professor of education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and professor of Hebrew literature at Tel Aviv University. He started publishing in 1938, writing fiction for both adults and children. Yizhar was considered Israel’s most illustrious writer. He was awarded the Israel Prize for his masterpiece, Days of Ziklag (1959). He also received the Brenner Prize, the Bialik Prize (1991) and the Emet Prize for Art, Science and Culture (2002). Days of Ziklag is included among The 100 Greatest Works of Modern Jewish Literature (2001).
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The Critics Praise:
"There is some of Yizhar in every writer who has come after him." - Amos Oz
"Once again [Yizhar] successfully undertakes all of those tasks for which he was honored in the past. This book is one of the most beautiful childhood memories ever written." Neue Zuericher Zeitung
"The author combines the highest aesthetic demands with a love for Israel....The novel is worthy of a place in the most demanding anthology of contemporary literature." L'Arche
"The great master of Hebrew lyrical prose". - Ha'aretz
“Shadows of Joyce, Faulkner and Woolf, for, like those masters, Yizhar is preoccupied with the way the mind works, the way it apprehends objects and experiences the world.” Kirkus, starred review
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