Khirbet Khizeh

by S. Yizhar

David Shulman

  Jerusalem, November 2007

  ALSO BY S. YIZHAR

  Days of Ziklag

  Preliminaries

  At Sea

  Asides

  Beautiful Malcolmia

  Discovering Elijah

  A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  S. Yizhar was the pen name of Yizhar Smilansky, born in Rehovot in 1916. A longtime member of the Knesset, he is most famous as the author of Khirbet Khizeh and of the untranslated magnum opus Days of Ziklag. He died in 2006.

  A NOTE ABOUT THE TRANSLATORS

  Nicholas de Lange, a professor emeritus of Hebrew and Jewish studies at Cambridge University, has translated many Hebrew novels, including Preliminaries by S. Yizhar.

  Yaacob Dweck translated Haim Sabato’s The Dawning of the Day. He is an assistant professor of history and Judaic studies at Princeton University.

  A NOTE ABOUT THE AFTERWORD AUTHOR

  David Shulman teaches Sanskrit and other Indian languages at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has published numerous books and is the author of Dark Hope: Working for Peace in Israel and Palestine. Shulman was named a MacArthur Fellow in 1987.

  Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  18 West 18th Street, New York 10011

  Hebrew copyright © 1949 by Noemi Smilansky and Zmora Bitan Publishers

  English translation copyright © 2008 by Nicholas de Lange and Yaacob Dweck

  Afterword copyright © 2008 by David Shulman and Ibis Editions

  All rights reserved

  English translation originally published in 2008 by Ibis Editions, Israel

  English translation published in 2011 by Granta Books, Great Britain

  Published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  Published by arrangement with the Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature

  First Farrar, Straus and Giroux edition, 2014

  This volume reproduces the translation edited and published by Ibis Editions in 2008.

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  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014949321

  Paperback ISBN: 978-0-374-53556-8

  E-book ISBN: 978-0-374-71385-0

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  Ibis Editions and the translators would like to thank Nitsa Ben-Ari, Isaac Zailer, and Gideon Nevo for their generous help. Special thanks as well to the Maor Foundation, Jerusalem and St. Louis.