Motti
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3 It should be noted that Motti received considerable attention upon its publication in Israel, including a glowing front-page review in the Haaretz book supplement (more or less the Israeli equivalent of the New York Times Book Review or the Guardian). The Israeli reading public’s (and/or its critical establishment’s) readiness to accept and even embrace Motti on its own unconventional terms says something about the expansive sense of what constitutes Israeli culture within Israel here in the early twenty-first century. Anglophone reading sensibilities, I’m guessing, are rather parochial by comparison, as I’d more confidently recommend Motti to a fan of David Foster Wallace than toone who prefers Amos Oz.
4 Robert Alter, Partial Magic: The Novel as Self-Conscious Genre (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), ix.