Art & War: Poetry, Pulp and Politics in Israeli Fiction

Description

Shimon Adaf and Lavie Tidhar are two of Israel's most subversive and politically outspoken writers. Growing up on opposite sides of the Israeli spectrum - Tidhar in the north of Israel in the Zionist, socialist Kibbutz; Adaf from a family of religious Mizrahi Jews living in Sderot - the two nevertheless shared a love of books, and were especially drawn to the strange visions and outrageous sensibilities of the science fiction that was available in Hebrew. Here, they engage in a dialogue that covers their approach to writing the fantastic, as they question how to write about Israel and Palestine, about Judaism, about the Holocaust, about childhoods and their end. Extending the conversation even into their fiction, the book contains two brand new short stories - "Tutim" by Tidhar, and "third attribute" by Adaf - in which each appears as a character in the other's tale; simultaneously political and fantastical, they burn with an angry, despairing intensity.

Shimon Adaf is the author of several highly regarded novels, including the Sapir Prize winning Mox Nox. His third poetry collection, Aviva-No, won the Yehuda Amichai Award. He lives in Tel Aviv. Lavie Tidhar was in Dar-es-Salaam during the American embassy bombings in 1998, and stayed in the same hotel as the Al Qaeda operatives in Nairobi. Since then he and his now-wife have narrowly avoided both the 2005 London, King's Cross and 2004 Sinai attacks-experiences that led to the creation of Osama. He is the author of many novels, including the Bookman trilogy and is a prolific short story writer.