Meir Shalev is loved not only in his native Israel, but around the world. Especially in Russia, where all of his novels have been released and have enjoyed unchanged, enduring success. But one unusual work by Shalev has long been waiting for a Russian reader. Now it is in front of you.
This is not a novel, but a book about books: Meir Shalev sets out on a journey through the pages of the works he has loved since his youth. He studies the characters of Ovid and Homer, Gogol and Melville, Nabokov and Thomas Mann, and tries to understand how the mysterious spell of that world of deceptive wonders—called literature—comes to be.
Contents:
Part One Mostly About Love
Foreword
First Conversation: About Childhood Illnesses
Second Conversation: Atalanta, Lolita, and the Nymph from Zfat
Third Conversation: The Imperfection of Beauty
Fourth Conversation: Fate Blind and Fate Seeing
Fifth Conversation: “Go Out from Your Land”[92]
Sixth Conversation: The Well of the Past
Part Two The Secrets of Pretending
Foreword
First Conversation: Our Teachers
Second Conversation: The Beloved Sister and the Sister-Beloved
Third Conversation: Gogol’s Nymph
Fourth Conversation: The Spirit of Narrative