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The Short Life
English, Hebrew (translation)
278 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 1980
About the author
Aharon Megged
32 books3 followersAharon Megged (Hebrew: אהרון מגד) (10 August 1920 – 23 March 2016) (Hebrew year 5680) was an Israeli author and playwright. In 2003, he was awarded the Israel Prize for literature.
Aharon Greenberg (later Megged) was born in 1920 in Włocławek, Poland. In 1926, he immigrated with his parents to Mandate Palestine. He grew up in Ra'anana, attending Herzliya high school in Tel Aviv. After graduation, he joined a Zionist pioneering youth movement, training at Kibbutz Giv'at Brenner. He was a member of Kibbutz Sdot Yam for twelve years.
Megged was married to author Ida Tsurit, with whom he had two children, Eyal Megged, also a writer, and Amos Megged, a lecturer in history at University of Haifa.
Megged was one of the founders of the Masa literary weekly, and served as its editor for fifteen years. He worked as a literary editor for theHebrew newspapers La-merhav and Davar. In 1977/78 he was author-in-residence at the Center for Hebrew Studies affiliated with Oxford University. He made several lecture tours of the United States, and was also author-in-residence at the University of Iowa. He published 35 books.
Megged's plays were performed at Habima, Ha-Ohel and other theaters. His books have been translated into numerous languages and published in the United Kingdom, the United States, Argentina, France, and other countries.
From 1968 to 1971, Megged served as cultural attaché to the Israeli embassy in London.
In 1974, Megged won the Bialik Prize for his books The Evyatar Notebooks: a novel and Of Trees and Stones.
In 2003, he was awarded the Israel Prize, for literature.
Megged won the Brenner Prize, the S.Y. Agnon Prize, and the Prime Minister's Prize.
(from Wikipedia)
Aharon Greenberg (later Megged) was born in 1920 in Włocławek, Poland. In 1926, he immigrated with his parents to Mandate Palestine. He grew up in Ra'anana, attending Herzliya high school in Tel Aviv. After graduation, he joined a Zionist pioneering youth movement, training at Kibbutz Giv'at Brenner. He was a member of Kibbutz Sdot Yam for twelve years.
Megged was married to author Ida Tsurit, with whom he had two children, Eyal Megged, also a writer, and Amos Megged, a lecturer in history at University of Haifa.
Megged was one of the founders of the Masa literary weekly, and served as its editor for fifteen years. He worked as a literary editor for theHebrew newspapers La-merhav and Davar. In 1977/78 he was author-in-residence at the Center for Hebrew Studies affiliated with Oxford University. He made several lecture tours of the United States, and was also author-in-residence at the University of Iowa. He published 35 books.
Megged's plays were performed at Habima, Ha-Ohel and other theaters. His books have been translated into numerous languages and published in the United Kingdom, the United States, Argentina, France, and other countries.
From 1968 to 1971, Megged served as cultural attaché to the Israeli embassy in London.
In 1974, Megged won the Bialik Prize for his books The Evyatar Notebooks: a novel and Of Trees and Stones.
In 2003, he was awarded the Israel Prize, for literature.
Megged won the Brenner Prize, the S.Y. Agnon Prize, and the Prime Minister's Prize.
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
July 10, 2012
This is a favorite novel of mine, read several times now. I was first attracted to it in 1980 by a review describing it as an Israeli Ulysses. Reading it I was delighted to see it's so. Set in 1966 Tel Aviv, it involves the relationship of a couple who bear resemblances to Leopold and Molly Bloom. Aharon Megged has deliberately incorporated some pastiches of the more famous charactistics of Ulysses into his novel: there's a cathechism chapter with its heavily-worded questions, there's a scene on the beach in which Shuka is attracted to a young girl, there's a section of dense interior prose as a woman lying in bed wonders where her husband is, and everywhere, everywhere in every head and situation flows the stream of consciousness. It's a lovely novel in its own right and it's lovely as a tribute to one of the most influential novels ever written.
There's a lot going on in the novel. Shuka, the husband and insurance salesman, is a fine template for Bloom. Elisheva, the wife, does the novel's heavy lifting because, beginning about p33, she's compared to Stephen Dedalus and carries him as well as Molly. Like Stephen, Elisheva is enormously intellectual. She teaches literature at the university and is busily engaged in writing a paper on Don Quixote. That's a key name indicating Megged has more than Ulysses on his mind. Elisheva's learning is at an elevated, idealistic level. She spends her days and nights musing and focused on literature and is so caught up in it that she has little time for the real world or the demands of family, much like the famous man of La Mancha. The lumbering, practical Shuka has his feet on the ground, just like Sancho Panza, and sees the world realistically. He looks after Elisheva and the practical sides of their life, too, as Bloom looked after Molly. The novel has many references to riding a horse, and to knights. Shuka drives a Fiat which he cares for lovingly and which is spoken of in terms you'd associate with a donkey. In fact, at one point his little Fiat runs away from him.
As I say, Elisheva, professor and writer constantly reflecting on literature when alone or discussing it with colleagues, or with Amnon, a novelist and Megged's stand-in for Blazes Boylan, bears the intellectual weight of a novel which alludes to many writers other than Joyce and Cervantes. In the convesations of characters like these Megged has much to say about writing, artistic personality, and the relationship between reader and writer. Such names as Flaubert and Pinter flow through the blue Mediterranean air of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. There's even a recurring story Elisheva imagines and keeps revising in her head which parodies the opening of Kafka's The Metamorphosis. And in the end Dante's terraced hell appears in the Negev.
I hope I've made The Short Life sound like fun because it is. If you admire Ulysses and Don Quixote and love to read how literature can relate to real life this is a fascinating read.
There's a lot going on in the novel. Shuka, the husband and insurance salesman, is a fine template for Bloom. Elisheva, the wife, does the novel's heavy lifting because, beginning about p33, she's compared to Stephen Dedalus and carries him as well as Molly. Like Stephen, Elisheva is enormously intellectual. She teaches literature at the university and is busily engaged in writing a paper on Don Quixote. That's a key name indicating Megged has more than Ulysses on his mind. Elisheva's learning is at an elevated, idealistic level. She spends her days and nights musing and focused on literature and is so caught up in it that she has little time for the real world or the demands of family, much like the famous man of La Mancha. The lumbering, practical Shuka has his feet on the ground, just like Sancho Panza, and sees the world realistically. He looks after Elisheva and the practical sides of their life, too, as Bloom looked after Molly. The novel has many references to riding a horse, and to knights. Shuka drives a Fiat which he cares for lovingly and which is spoken of in terms you'd associate with a donkey. In fact, at one point his little Fiat runs away from him.
As I say, Elisheva, professor and writer constantly reflecting on literature when alone or discussing it with colleagues, or with Amnon, a novelist and Megged's stand-in for Blazes Boylan, bears the intellectual weight of a novel which alludes to many writers other than Joyce and Cervantes. In the convesations of characters like these Megged has much to say about writing, artistic personality, and the relationship between reader and writer. Such names as Flaubert and Pinter flow through the blue Mediterranean air of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. There's even a recurring story Elisheva imagines and keeps revising in her head which parodies the opening of Kafka's The Metamorphosis. And in the end Dante's terraced hell appears in the Negev.
I hope I've made The Short Life sound like fun because it is. If you admire Ulysses and Don Quixote and love to read how literature can relate to real life this is a fascinating read.
Displaying 1 of 1 review