TOBY PRESS PUBLISHES 'THE OWL,' WINNER OF
PEN/UNESCO AWARD, AND OTHER STORIES

John Auerbach's The Owl and Other Stories to be
Released September 15 2003

"Writing that is concise, direct, subtle…and most important; gripping and entertaining" - Ma'ariv

"The best hours for a critic are of unexpected discovery. I experienced such hours when I discovered the stories of John Auerbach. Stories that are unusual in their subjects and their impassioned lyricism." - Yediot Aharonot

"John Auerbach's stories are crystallized and structured to perfection." - A.B. Yehoshua

In John Auerbach's THE OWL AND OTHER STORIES (Toby Press, July 2003) an owl is blown off course by the rumbling of a volcano and sits impassive on an Israeli ship as the crew discuss what to do with it; a veteran of the Spanish civil war signs up to help transport illegal immigrants to pre-state Israel but becomes obsessed with a newspaper kiosk girl, with unforeseen results; a man too old to enlist in the army when the Yom Kippur war breaks out goes on one final sea voyage to collect munitions for his beleaguered country; and an old sailor recollects meeting the biblical hero, Noah, in a port in Smyrna. THE OWL AND OTHER STORIES marks the first time that this remarkable collection of stories is available in book form. THE OWL AND OTHER STORIES includes works that were originally published in magazines such as Commentary, Bostonia, PEN magazine, News from the Republic of Letters, The Boston Globe Magazine and others. The title story, "The Owl" is a remarkable vignette that won the first PEN/UNESCO prize in 1993 on the basis of its "content and [its] power of communication."

Auerbach's tales draw on the themes that ran through his life; his years at sea, on kibbutz in Israel, his survival and the survival of others from the horrors of war and the Holocaust. With its acute observation of society and human nature, particularly within the microcosm of life at sea, THE OWL AND OTHER STORIES is a gripping, insightful, and ultimately, intensely moving collection.

John Auerbach was born in Warsaw in 1922. During the Second World War, he escaped from the Warsaw Ghetto and worked on German ships as a stoker under a false identity. He served in the Israeli Merchant Marines until the death of his son in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when he left his life at sea and returned to living on a kibbutz. There he wrote and published twelve books of short stories and novellas. Auerbach received first prize in the first PEN/UNESCO Awards in 1993. He died in 2002.