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Israel

The covers of the books featured in the list
Your #IWD2023 Reading List
By Words Without Borders
In honor of International Women’s Day 2023, WWB recommends 10 forthcoming books written and translated by women and published by small presses.
The covers of all the books featured in the list
12 Global Children’s Books for History Lovers
By Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp
In celebration of #WorldKidLitMonth, Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp recommends 12 international books for young readers with an interest in world history.
An International Menagerie: Animal Stories
By Susan Harris
Some of the animals here possess the power of speech, deploying it to often subversive ends.
Spring Cleaning
By Yishai Sarid
“I’ve been married almost twenty-five years, and I’ve never gotten carried away on an adventure like this before.”
Translated from Hebrew by Yardenne Greenspan
And What If Love Is Stronger? The Queer Issue
By Susan Harris
In this troubling context, the need for portrayals of queer lives around the world becomes even more urgent.
Rainbow Families: Four Parents and Two Children
By Karolina Domagalska
Go and find a father for your child.
Translated from Polish by Marta Dziurosz
Just Dinner, but Oh, What a Feast
By Rohan Kamicheril
Though food may fail to broker communication, this is often one of its major supposed roles.
Instructions for Eating Granny Ora’s Kibbeh
By Moshe Sakal
Israeli cuisine is a mystery, a black hole, a utopia.
Translated from Hebrew by Jessica Cohen
Multilingual
Urban Tails
By Ilana Zeffren
Where are they? It's late.
Translated by the author
Comics and Graphic Narratives: A Global Cultural Commons
By Dominic Davies
Comics themselves have a role to play in the construction of a more globally aware social consciousness.
Yiddish Literature and the Transnational Republic of Jewish Letters
By Sebastian Schulman
Yiddish literature occupies the precarious position of an informed outsider.
Ingathering of Exiles
By Yenta Mash
Him I believe, even if he is Polish.
Translated from Yiddish by Ellen Cassedy
From “Raking Light from Ashes”
By Relli Robinson
Now you’ll be our daughter a little bit too.
Translated from Hebrew by Yardenne Greenspan
Graphic Novels at WWB: The First Ten Years
By Susan Harris
The narrative threads that weave through the last ten years tell a tale in themselves.
The Fall
By Galit Seliktar & Gilad Seliktar
It parachuted down.
Translated by On Barak
The Queer Issue V: Impressions from a Passing Train
By Rohan Kamicheril
The appeal of the Queer Issue is in seeing that great ambition writ small, in discovering the swarm of details and experience that cohere into the big picture of world writing.
Full Body Scan
By Miki Golod
Do you know anyone who died in the army?
Translated by the author
February 2014 Hadar Reuven The Sugar Expert Preview
The Sugar Expert
By Hadar Reuven
They reached the streetlight every time, except once.
Translated by Hadar Reuven & Shachar Galek
Hysteric Behavior #3
By Dan Allon
It's actually nice to talk to strangers.
Translated by G. H. Freedman
Ludwig and I Kill Hitler for No Reason (or, A Berlin Springtime)
By Etgar Keret
“Adolf, it's you, I didn't recognize you at first without the ridiculous mustache.”
Translated from Hebrew by Miriam Shlesinger
Review
By Hanoch Levin
They plumb in crude terms the physical attributes of her desired but unobtainable physique.
Translated from Hebrew by Atar Hadari
Velocity
By Ofir Touche Gafla
I wanted the daughter who quit doing drugs cold turkey, at age ten.
Translated from Hebrew by Gilah Kahn-Hoffmann
Multilingual
War Rabbit
By Rutu Modan & Igal Sarna
Translated from Hebrew by G. H. Freedman
“The Dakar Courier”
By Dror Burstein
Only then they discovered that underneath the man were two giant eggs.
Translated from Hebrew by Dalya Bilu
From “Soul Mate”
By Yehoshuah Bar-Yosef
My father-in-law, Feibush, arrived unannounced at my doorstep in the middle of the week.
Translated from Hebrew by Adam Rovner
Islamorada
By Rivka Keren
During the twilight hours of one day in January, the professor and his wife arrived at a small motel on the beach at Islamorada
Translated from Hebrew by Dalit Shmueli
Multilingual
From “Almost Dead”
By Assaf Gavron
I climbed aboard the Little No. 5 as I did every morning on my way to work.
Translated from Hebrew by Assaf Gavron & James Lever
From “Farm 54”
By Galit Seliktar & Gilad Seliktar
The graphic novel Farm 54 brings together three semi-autobiographical stories from the childhood, puberty, and early adulthood (military service years) of its female protagonist, growing up in Israel’s…
Translated from Hebrew by Ronen Altman Kaydar
Trumpet Lessons
By Yoav Avni
Now he’s cold and he doesn’t believe it and he’s crying.
Translated from Hebrew by Margalit Rodgers
Multilingual
The Tragedy of Narcissus The Comedy of Silver
By Mahmoud Darwish
They returned…
Translated from Arabic by Fady Joudah
How Old is the Queen of England?
By Agur Schiff
The old dog lumbers beside me, exhaling and inhaling laboriously and tracking my steps with her bowed head turned white with old age.
Translated from Hebrew by Jessica Cohen
Multilingual
The First Love
By Meir Shalev
The village rocked tranquilly upon the waves, up and down, creating a strange sensation.
Translated from Hebrew by Stuart Schoffman
Multilingual
This Animated Life: An Interview with David Polonsky
By Liel Leibovitz
A few simple descriptions would suffice to understand just how rich and strange an artwork Waltz with Bashir truly is: an animated documentary film
Waltz with Bashir
By Ari Folman
Translated from Hebrew by David Polonsky
From “Laundry”
By Suzane Adam
I don't blame my parents for what happened next, they had enough troubles.
Translated from Hebrew by Becka Mara McKay
Dafna
By Yael Hedaya
So what is the moment? What does it look like?
Translated from Hebrew by Jessica Cohen
The Soul Mate
By A. B. Yehoshua
My only son has a soul mate I'm not fond of.
Translated from Hebrew by Gila Brand
From “Seven Moral Failings”
By Maya Arad
Now was the time to ask for a recommendation from David.
Translated from Hebrew by Jeffrey M. Green
Multilingual
Parting, a scene
By Dvorah Baron
. . . then the sun began to set.
Translated from Hebrew by Tsipi Keller
Gulliver in Icelandic
By Etgar Keret
On my first day, I was overcome with dread.
Translated from Hebrew by Miriam Shlesinger
Ten Short Pieces
By Alex Epstein
Who, these days, hasn't woken from a dream of murdering an angel?
Translated from Hebrew by Becka Mara McKay
Multilingual
The Creature
By Guy Morad
Translated from Hebrew by Riva Hocherman
Cinderella
By Sayed Kashua
Herzl Haliwa lets out a scream and jerks his head from the pillow in alarm.
Translated from Hebrew by Vivian Eden
Multilingual
Elves
By Sara Shilo
Where does Mrs. Simona go at night? Where are her feet taking her?
Translated from Hebrew by Jeffrey M. Green
Multilingual
My Fallow Years
By Orly Castel-Bloom
When I grow old, in however many three-month intervals, I'll gain more and more disabilities, cognitive and otherwise.
Translated from Hebrew by Miriam Shlesinger
Multilingual
The Ambush
By Yitzhak Laor
Naturally, he didn't say a word to his troops about the stupidity of their superior officers.
Translated from Hebrew by Gina Glasman
Multilingual
An Address
By Ida Fink
It would be madness to delude himself into believing that Maria and the boy were still alive.
Translated from Polish by Philip Boehm
Mordechai’s Mustache and His Wife’s Cats
By Mahmoud Shukair
Mordechai is a simple person, like tens of thousands of others in Tel Aviv (though he would insist that there are few like him there).
Translated from Arabic by Michael K. Scott
Diary
By Mahmoud Darwish
If you were told: you're going to die here this evening What would you do in the remaining time?
Translated from Arabic by John Berger & Tania Tamari Nasir
Rababa
By Azmi Bishara
But the rababa is a naked, homeless instrument, and that is why, like beggars who do not have a rababa, the man used a standard tool for panhandling, a plastic plate.
Translated from Arabic by Taline Voskeritchian
House Work
By Mahmoud Darwish
-1-How oftendid I go in the morning to Thursday’smarket. I bought our house supplies,and chose an orchid and mailed the letters.A rain made me wet and filled me with the scent of oranges.Did you…
Translated from Arabic by Fady Joudah
Jameel Bouthaina, and I
By Mahmoud Darwish
She grows old, my friend, outside the heart / in others' eyes.
Translated from Arabic by Fady Joudah
Our Holocaust
By Amir Gutfreund
People died for a bit of cabbage, I escalated.
Translated from Hebrew by Jessica Cohen
Please Leave a Message
By Nira Harel
Good, Dudi said and hurried to take down Grandma's funny message. He found a blank space on the page and drew Bambi. He'd look at the drawing and remember Grandma's message.
Translated from Hebrew by Miriam Shlesinger
At Home in Exile: An Interview with Shimon Ballas
This interview appeared in slightly different form in Keys to the Garden: New Israeli Writing, edited and translated by Ammiel Alcalay (San Francisco: City Lights, 1996).Ammiel Alcalay: Starting with…
Translated from Hebrew by Ammiel Alcalay
From “Outcast”
By Shimon Ballas
How can one explain that which goes beyond logic? In the dream I was asked to read something and I couldn't.
Translated from Hebrew by Ammiel Alcalay