Yoel Hoffmann—“Israel’s celebrated avant-garde genius” (The Forward)—supplies the magic missing link between the infinitesimal and the infinite Part novel and part memoir, Yoel Hoffmann’s Moods is flooded with feelings, evoked by his family, losses, loves, the soul’s hidden powers, old phone books, and life in the Galilee—with its every scent, breeze, notable dog, and odd neighbor. Carrying these shards is a general tenderness, accentuated by a new dimension brought along by “that great big pill of Prozac.” Beautifully translated by Peter Cole, Moods is fiction for lovers of poetry and poetry for lovers of fiction—a small marvel of a book, and with its pockets of joy, a curiously cheerful book by an author who once compared himself to “a praying mantis inclined to melancholy.”
Originally from Vienna, Hoffmann's heroine is a widow who still speaks German after decades in Israel. The myriad mini-chapters offer many views of Aunt Magda - her childhood, her marriage, her nephew, her best friend Frau Stier, Wildegans' poetry, apple strudel, visions and dreams, two stolen handbags, a favorite cafe, and a gentleman admirer."--BOOK JACKET.
Shunra is Aramaic for "cat." Schmetterling is German for "butterfly." In Yoel Hoffmann's new book, these and numerous other creatures, cultures, and languages meet in a magical shimmering hymn to childhood. Hoffmann traces his hero's developing consciousness of the ways-and-wonders of the world as though he were peering through a tremendous kaleidoscope: all that was perceived, all that is remembered, is rendered in fluid fragments of color and light. With remarkable delicacy and sweep, Hoffmann captures childhood from the amazed inside out, and without the backward-looking wash of grown-up sentiment. Instead, the boy's deadpan registration of the human comedy around him is offered up as strangely magical fact. Beautifully translated by Peter Cole, The Shunra and the Schmetterling is fiction for lovers of poetry and poetry for lovers of fiction--a small marvel of a book, and one of the author's finest to date.
When The Sound of the One Hand came out in Japan in 1916 it caused a scandal. Zen was a secretive practice, its wisdom relayed from master to novice in strictest privacy. That a handbook existed recording not only the riddling koans that are central to Zen teaching but also detailing the answers to them seemed to mark Zen as rote, not revelatory. For all that, The Sound of the One Hand opens the door to Zen like no other book. Including koans that go back to the master who first brought the koan teaching method from China to Japan in the eighteenth century, this book offers, in the words of the translator, editor, and Zen initiate Yoel Hoffmann, “the clearest, most detailed, and most correct picture of Zen” that can be found. What we have here is an extraordinary introduction to Zen thought as lived thought, a treasury of problems, paradoxes, and performance that will appeal to artists, writers, and philosophers as well as Buddhists and students of religion.
The Christ of Fish is a gorgeous novel conjured out of a mosaic of 233 pieces of Aunt Magda's life in Tel Aviv. Originally from Vienna, Hoffmann's heroine is a widow who still speaks German after decades in Israel: we see many views of Aunt Magdaher childhood, her marriage, her nephew, her best friend Frau Stier, Wildegans' poetry, apple strudel, visions and dreams, two stolen handbags, a favorite cafe, and a gentleman admirer.
The reflections of Bernhardt Stein, a Jew from Berlin, as he observes World War II from his refuge in Palestine. A philosophical novel by an Israeli writer, author of Katschen and the Book of Joseph.
Shunra is Aramaic for "cat." Schmetterling is German for "butterfly." In Yoel Hoffmann's new book, these and numerous other creatures, cultures, and languages meet in a magical shimmering hymn to childhood. Hoffmann traces his hero's developing consciousness of the ways-and-wonders of the world as though he were peering through a tremendous kaleidoscope: all that was perceived, all that is remembered, is rendered in fluid fragments of color and light. With remarkable delicacy and sweep, Hoffmann captures childhood from the amazed inside out, and without the backward-looking wash of grown-up sentiment. Instead, the boy's deadpan registration of the human comedy around him is offered up as strangely magical fact. Beautifully translated by Peter Cole, The Shunra and the Schmetterling is fiction for lovers of poetry and poetry for lovers of fiction--a small marvel of a book, and one of the author's finest to date.
Yoel Hoffmann—“Israel’s celebrated avant-garde genius” (The Forward)—supplies the magic missing link between the infinitesimal and the infinite Part novel and part memoir, Yoel Hoffmann’s Moods is flooded with feelings, evoked by his family, losses, loves, the soul’s hidden powers, old phone books, and life in the Galilee—with its every scent, breeze, notable dog, and odd neighbor. Carrying these shards is a general tenderness, accentuated by a new dimension brought along by “that great big pill of Prozac.” Beautifully translated by Peter Cole, Moods is fiction for lovers of poetry and poetry for lovers of fiction—a small marvel of a book, and with its pockets of joy, a curiously cheerful book by an author who once compared himself to “a praying mantis inclined to melancholy.”
When The Sound of the One Hand came out in Japan in 1916 it caused a scandal. Zen was a secretive practice, its wisdom relayed from master to novice in strictest privacy. That a handbook existed recording not only the riddling koans that are central to Zen teaching but also detailing the answers to them seemed to mark Zen as rote, not revelatory. For all that, The Sound of the One Hand opens the door to Zen like no other book. Including koans that go back to the master who first brought the koan teaching method from China to Japan in the eighteenth century, this book offers, in the words of the translator, editor, and Zen initiate Yoel Hoffmann, “the clearest, most detailed, and most correct picture of Zen” that can be found. What we have here is an extraordinary introduction to Zen thought as lived thought, a treasury of problems, paradoxes, and performance that will appeal to artists, writers, and philosophers as well as Buddhists and students of religion.
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