false 1311507 1 After a silence of almost 30 years since his <i>Stories of a Plain</i>, Yizhar reasserted his position as the greatest living master of Hebrew prose with <i>Preliminaries</i>. Strongly autobiographical, <i>Preliminaries</i> progresses frame by frame, showing a boy growing up in a Jewish farming community in Palestine and in the young city of Tel Aviv between the years 1917 and 1930. The boy's sensual experience, his most primary, embryonic grasp of the world, coalesces with the adult consciousness looking back, a kind of late return to the innermost part of the child. His growing-up is linked to the story of the land of Israel in the early days of Jewish agricultural settlement: the longing to create a new Jew, the harsh existence of the struggling community, the early clashes between Jews and Arabs. Yizhar's pictures are rich in sensual power, laden with scents and colors. But the real subject of <i>Preliminaries</i> is a child's discovery, in confusion, wonder and terror, of the concrete world around him. In resurrecting his childhood in the land of Israel, Yizhar is carrying out a gentle stocktaking of the renewed Jewish society. <P><i>Preliminaries</i> has been translated by Nicholas de Lange of Cambridge University, one of today's outstanding translators from Hebrew to English. Introduced by Dan Miron. 1300797 5 2007 Preliminaries (Hebrew Classics) total:1|5:1| 1 5 5 1 0 0 false false Wed Mar 25 09:38:28 -0700 2009 Wed Mar 25 09:38:28 -0700 2009 London Review: Yizhar's finest work is this autobiographical novel, completed in 1991 when he was 75...memories of an excruciatingly thin, socially margina., lonely and troubled child, set bewteen 1918 and 1928... Yizhar was born in Israel, the child of settlers.]]> 0 0 false false Tue Jun 09 17:40:25 -0700 2009 Tue Jun 09 17:40:25 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Sun Apr 05 15:04:23 -0700 2009 Sun Apr 05 15:04:23 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Thu Jan 08 00:29:14 -0800 2009 Thu Jan 08 00:29:14 -0800 2009 5 0 false false Wed Jan 16 09:55:26 -0800 2008 Wed Jan 16 09:55:26 -0800 2008 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=1311507