The Shunra and the Schmetterling

by Yoel Hoffmann, Peter Cole (Translator)

Shunra is Aramaic for cat. Schmetterling is German for butterfly. In Yoel Hoffmann's new book, these and numerous other creatures, cultures, and languages meet in a magical shimmering hymn to childhood. Hoffmann traces his hero's developing consciousness of the ways-and-wonders of the world as though he were peering through a tremendous kaleidoscope: all that was perceived, all that is remembered, is rendered in fluid fragments of color and light. With remarkable delicacy and sweep, Hoffmann captures childhood from the amazed inside out, and without the backward-looking wash of grown-up sentiment. Instead, the boy's deadpan registration of the human comedy around him is offered up as strangely magical fact. Beautifully translated by Peter Cole, The Shunra & the Schmetterling is fiction for lovers of poetry and poetry for lovers of fiction--a small marvel of a book, and one of the author's finest to date.

Genres: Poetry, Fiction

96 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Yoel Hoffmann (23 June 1937– 25 August 2023) was an Israeli Jewish contemporary author, editor, scholar and translator.

Reviews

[Tristan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okay, so I will begin by saying that if I had anyone to discuss this book with, it would automatically become a five star book. As an American high schooler, I had a little bit of trouble finding the thread of the story from time to time, but it was absolutely fascinating. I desperately want to analyse and discuss this, but don't have a real outlet to do so for this particular book (It seems a bit weird to start doing research and writing papers in my free time before I go to college). It was difficult, but the prose poems were beautiful and elegant. If I could read Hebrew, I'd love to read this in the original, but I can't,so I commend the translator for doing a fantastic job of creating a smooth, readable work. A challenging, but well worthwhile read. Highly recommended. I need to talk to someone about this, it has so much potential for discussion. Themes of memory, humanity, childhood/coming-of-age, and more. So good.

[Kirk Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

At first this seems like beautiful poetryprose awkwardly mixed with the prosaic, but after about thirty pages it starts to dawn that this is the whole point, and that the writer is an alchemist. Once my brain shifted to understand the book, I found it shockingly beautiful. And the end, as books have been wont to do this year, stomped with grace on my heart.

Here's another delight: either the author or the translator has put translations of most foreign terms in: not just footnotes, but footnotes on the same page. Would to God above others would follow this example.

[Michael Gossett · Rating 5 out of 5]

At the top of my personal canon, Hoffmann's novels (novellas?) read as surreal prose poems on memory, reverie, and giving an account of one's own life. The cat chasing the butterfly (literally the 'shunra' and the 'schmetterling' of the title) makes for a beautiful allegory of a mine's chasing after his childhood home.