From the author of the acclaimed novel A Pigeon and a Boy comes a charming tale of family ties, over-the-top housekeeping, and the sport of storytelling in Nahalal, the village of Meir Shalev’s birth. Here we meet Shalev’s amazing Grandma Tonia, who arrived in Palestine by boat from Russia in 1923 and lived in a constant state of battle with what she viewed as the family’s biggest enemy in their new land: dirt. Grandma Tonia was never seen without a cleaning rag over her shoulder. She received visitors outdoors. She allowed only the most privileged guests to enter her spotless house. Hilarious and touching, Grandma Tonia and her regulations come richly to life in a narrative that circles around the arrival into the family’s dusty agricultural midst of the big, shiny American sweeper sent as a gift by Great-uncle Yeshayahu (he who had shockingly emigrated to the sinful capitalist heaven of Los Angeles!). America, to little Meir and to his forebears, was a land of hedonism and enchanting progress; of tempting luxuries, dangerous music, and degenerate gum-chewing; and of women with painted fingernails. The sweeper, a stealth weapon from Grandpa Aharon’s American brother meant to beguile the hardworking socialist household with a bit of American ease, was symbolic of the conflicts and visions of the family in every respect. The fate of Tonia’s “svieeperrr”—hidden away for decades in a spotless closed-off bathroom after its initial use—is a family mystery that Shalev determines to solve. The result, in this cheerful translation by Evan Fallenberg, is pure delight, as Shalev brings to life the obsessive but loving Tonia, the pioneers who gave his childhood its spirit of wonder, and the grit and humor of people building ever-new lives.
The bestselling and prize-winning Israeli author Meir Shalev describes the many "firsts" of the Bible – the first love and the first death, to the first laugh and the first dream – providing a fresh, secular and surprising look at the stories we think we know. The first kiss in the Bible is not a kiss of love. The first love in the Bible is not the love of a man and a woman. The first hatred in the Bible is the hatred of a man toward his wife. The first laugh in the Bible is also the last. In Beginnings, Meir Shalev reintroduces us to the heroes and heroines of the Old Testament, exploring these and many more of the Bible’s unexpected "firsts." Combining penetrating wit, deep empathy, and impressive knowledge of the Bible, he probes each episode to uncover nuances and implications that a lesser writer would overlook, and his nontraditional, nonreligious interpretations of the famous stories of the Bible take them beyond platitudes and assumptions to the love, fear, tragedy, and inspiration at their heart. Literary, inquisitive, and honest, Shalev makes these stories come alive in all their complicated beauty, and though these stories are ancient, their resonance remains intensely contemporary.
A mesmerizing novel of two love stories, separated by half a century but connected by one enchanting act of devotion—from the internationally acclaimed Israeli writer Meir Shalev. During the 1948 War of Independence—a time when pigeons are still used to deliver battlefield messages—a gifted young pigeon handler is mortally wounded. In the moments before his death, he dispatches one last pigeon. The bird is carrying his extraordinary gift to the girl he has loved since adolescence. Intertwined with this story is the contemporary tale of Yair Mendelsohn, who has his own legacy from the 1948 war. Yair is a tour guide specializing in bird-watching trips who, in middle age, falls in love again with a childhood girlfriend. His growing passion for her, along with a gift from his mother on her deathbed, becomes the key to a life he thought no longer possible. Unforgettable in both its particulars and its sweep, A Pigeon and A Boy is a tale of lovers then and now—of how deeply we love, of what home is, and why we, like pigeons trained to fly in one direction only, must eventually return to it. In a voice that is at once playful, wise, and altogether beguiling, Meir Shalev tells a story as universal as war and as intimate as a winged declaration of love.
A woman with three loves and a son with three fathers: a universal story of passion and personal destiny by the award-winning author of A Pigeon and a Boy. When the mysterious Judith arrives in a small agricultural village in Palestine in the 1930s, she attracts attention of three men: Moshe, a widowed farmer; Globerman, a wealthy cattle dealer; and Jacob, who loses his wife—the most beautiful woman in the village—because of his obsession with Judith, who insists on living in a cowshed rather than settling down with any of her admirers. When she gives birth to Zayde, all three suitors consider him their son, and Zayde, who tragically loses Judith, imbibes their triple wisdom and their distinct versions of his origins. As Zayde pieces together the beguiling story of the singular woman who was his mother, Meir Shalev weaves a magical novel of the joys and secrets of village life, of an unconventional family, and the unexpected fruits of love.
One of Israel’s most celebrated novelists—the acclaimed author of A Pigeon and a Boy—gives us a story of village love and vengeance in the early days of British Palestine that is still being played out two generations later. “In the year 1930 three farmers committed suicide here . . . but contrary to the chronicles of our committee and the conclusions of the British policeman, the people of the moshava knew that only two of the suicides had actually taken their own lives, whereas the third suicide had been murdered.” This is the contention of Ruta Tavori, a high school teacher and independent thinker in this small farming community who is writing seventy years later about that murder, about two charismatic men she loves and is trying to forgive—her grandfather and her husband—and about her son, whom she mourns and misses. In a story rich with the grit, humor, and near-magical evocation of Israeli rural life for which Meir Shalev is beloved by readers, Ruta weaves a tale of friendship between men, and of love and betrayal, which carries us from British Palestine to present-day Israel, where forgiveness, atonement, and understanding can finally happen.
A colorfully illustrated round of the season in the garden of the best-selling novelist, memoirist, and champion putterer with a wheelbarrow On the perimeter of Israel’s Jezreel Valley, with the Carmel mountains rising up in the west, Meir Shalev has a beloved garden, “neither neatly organized nor well kept,” as he cheerfully explains. Often covered in mud and scrapes, Shalev cultivates both nomadic plants and “house dwellers,” using his own quirky techniques. He extolls the virtues of the lemon tree, rescues a precious variety of purple snapdragon from the Jerusalem–Tel Aviv highway, and does battle with a saboteur mole rat. He even gives us his superior private recipe for curing olives. Informed by Shalev’s literary sensibility, his sometime riotous humor, and his deep curiosity about the land, My Wild Garden abounds with appreciation for the joy of living, quite literally, on Earth. Our borrowed time on any particular patch of it is enhanced, the author reminds us, by our honest, respectful dealings with all manner of beings who inhabit it with us.
This volume presents the Old Testament book of Samuel, with an introduction by Meir Shalev. In two parts, the book tells the story of one of the most charismatic of Old Testament characters, King David and his meteoric rise and inevitable fall.
Focusing on the Jewish pioneer settlers of the Jezreel Valley in Palestine at the turn of the century, The Blue Mountain celebrates the passions and ideals of three men in love with the same woman. The author's amazing imagination cultivates a portrait of a people trying to realize life in the promised land.
A modern version of a classic biblical story about the rivalry of two brothers, Esau and Jacob. In this one, when Jacob steals his woman and inherits the family bakery, Esau emigrates to America to become a gourmet food columnist. By the author of The Blue Mountain, a noted Israeli writer.
Lorsque Itamar, quarantenaire d’une beauté saisissante, se fait aborder dans un bar de Tel Aviv par une mystérieuse inconnue, il ne peut pas refuser ses avances. Tout semble conduire à une histoire sans lendemain, mais la situation dérape et tourne au cauchemar. Vingt ans plus tard, en 2010, de retour en Israël, Itamar retrouve son frère. Durant leur rituelle soirée de retrouvailles autour d’une bouteille d’alcool de figue, il décide que le temps est venu de se confier sur sa mésaventure. De cette conversation entre frères naît le récit d’une nuit pleine de rebondissements. À rebours des clichés, Meir Shalev nous questionne sur la virilité, les liens familiaux et les peines d’amour, nous tenant en haleine jusqu’à la dernière page.
Banni de la famille après son installation en Californie, l’oncle Yeshayahou concocte un plan diabolique pour secouer son frère et sa belle-sœur Tonia, la grand-mère du narrateur, installés au mochav de Nahalal, une coopérative agricole de Galilée. Après la révolution d’Octobre, et alors qu’une importante partie de la communauté juive quitte la Russie pour émigrer en Palestine, se développe une défiance toujours plus grande vis-à-vis de l’Amérique au sein des communautés socialistes de la région. Autant dire que l’oncle – qui se fait maintenant appeler Sam – est considéré comme le traître de la dynastie, un vulgaire capitaliste essayant de se racheter par l’envoi d’enveloppes pleines de dollars. Il connaît l’obsession de la grand-mère Tonia pour la propreté et décide de lui envoyer le tout dernier modèle d’aspirateur. Personnage à part entière, l’aspirateur nommé sweeper devient le moteur des histoires familiales, des tensions intergénérationnelles, et des anecdotes les plus folles. C’est que l’objet magique possède en réalité un secret. Grand-mère Tonia découvre avec stupeur que la saleté n’a pas disparu de son appartement mais s’est confortablement installée dans le ventre du cheval de Troie. Immédiatement enfermé dans la salle de bains et recouvert d’un linceul blanc, il restera cloîtré quarante années avant de revoir la lumière et finalement se volatiliser. Plusieurs versions de sa disparition existent, mais peu importe les variantes, Meir Shalev met ici en scène sa vision de l’écrivain, un conteur qui s’applique à raconter l’incroyable sur le terreau de la réalité. Il nous plonge avec une légèreté jouissive dans son invraisemblable histoire familiale et dégage ainsi avec une grande finesse les ambiguïtés de la société israélienne naissante.
En 1930, le jeune Ze’ev Tavori quitte sa Galilée natale pour s’installer dans un nouveau village au sud du mont Carmel, avec «tout ce dont un homme a besoin» : un fusil, une vache, un arbre et une femme. Mais dès la première année, son mariage tourne mal. Depuis, personne n’a jamais osé parler de ce qui a pu se passer en cet hiver 1930, mais la colère et la vengeance de Ze’ev ont marqué les Tavori sur plusieurs générations. Seule sa petite-fille Ruta, enseignante à l’esprit rebelle, connaît l’ampleur du drame qui a frappé sa famille. Lorsqu'elle est à son tour touchée par une tragédie, Ruta choisit de ne plus se taire. Meir Shalev évoque les grands thèmes de l’Ancien Testament – amour et trahison, résilience et expiation –, depuis la Palestine mandataire jusqu’à l’Israël d’aujourd’hui, où le pardon devient possible.
Michael Yoffé, né à peu près en même temps que l’État d’Israël, se fait le narrateur de sa propre vie, et plus encore, le commentateur de l’histoire de ses parents, grands-parents, oncles et tantes, tous vivant dans une grande propriété agricole fondée par le clan. Car chez les Yoffé, on n’oublie rien, sauf 'quand il y a épanchement de sperme, de sang ou de lait'. En plus de cette caractéristique partagée par toute la famille, Michael est doté d’une anomalie anatomique très particulière, à l’origine de sa sensibilité extrême : sa fontanelle ne s’est jamais refermée. Le récit haut en couleurs de ce narrateur pas comme les autres, éternellement amoureux de la femme qui lui a sauvé la vie lorsqu’il avait cinq ans, et néanmoins marié à l’énergique Alona et père de jumeaux, nous plonge dans une saga familiale dont les rebondissements parfois extravagants épousent les méandres de la jeune histoire israélienne. Grande fresque hyperréaliste et baroque à la fois, Fontanelle emporte le lecteur dans une verve comique irrésistible pour nous offrir un bonheur de lecture rare.
In Het zat zo keren we terug naar Shalevs geboorteplaats Nahalal, waar het huis van oma Tonja staat. Zij kwam in 1923 van Oekraïne naar Palestina en moest haar leven lang strijden om het hoofd boven water te houden, en het stof buiten de deur. Tonja heeft last van extreme schoonmaakwoede. De stofzuiger die ze uit Amerika krijgt toegestuurd maakt het er niet beter op. Het zat zo... zijn de woorden waarmee oma Tonja steevast haar verhalen begint, net zoals haar dochter en haar kleinzoon Meir, die alles met zichtbaar plezier optekent. Het zat zo vertelt de geschiedenis van een unieke grootmoeder en haar familie. Het is ook het verhaal over idealen en lange tochten door verschillende continenten. Het zat zo is een geestige en ontroerende roman over de kracht van de verbeelding en het vertellen van verhalen.
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