Kirjahaku

In Imagined Cities, Robert Alter traces the arc of literary development triggered by the runaway growth of urban centers from the early nineteenth century through the first two decades of the twentieth. As new technologies and arrangements of public and private space changed the ways people experienced time and space, the urban panorama became less coherent—a metropolis defying traditional representation and definition, a vast jumble of shifting fragments and glimpses—and writers were compelled to create new methods for conveying the experience of the city.In a series of subtle and convincing interpretations of novels by Flaubert, Dickens, Bely, Woolf, Joyce, and Kafka, Alter reveals the ways the city entered the literary imagination. He shows how writers of diverse imaginative temperaments developed innovative techniques to represent shifts in modern consciousness. Writers sought more than a journalistic representation of city living, he argues, and to convey meaningfully the reality of the metropolis, the city had to be re-created or reimagined. His book probes the literary response to changing realities of the period and contributes significantly to our understanding of the history of the Western imagination.

In this illuminating book, one of our foremost literary critics views the much-debated question of the literary canon from an entirely new angle. Robert Alter explores the ways in which a range of iconoclastic twentieth-century authors have put to use the stories, language, and imagery of the paramount canonical text—the Hebrew Bible. Alter makes a compelling case against the prevalent, pejorative notion of the canon as a vehicle of ideological enforcement. He shows instead that canons by nature are surprisingly elastic, providing later writers with imaginative resources even when those same writers rebel against what they conceive as the constraints of the canon. Focusing special attention on Franz Kafka’s Amerika, Haim Nahman Bialik’s The Dead of the Desert, and James Joyce’s Ulysses, Alter brings to bear an unusual perspective, putting into a single frame of discussion three writers from widely different linguistic traditions (German, Hebrew, English) and from disparate cultural settings (Prague, Odessa, Dublin). Alter’s close readings of these major modern writers reveal how reference to canonical antecedents can be both surprisingly various and enabling. Examining the diverse modes in which Biblical material becomes interwoven with the fabric of a new work, he also offers new insights into the nature and range of modernism. Critically appreciative rather than polemic in tone, Alter conveys in this thoughtful book a renewed sense of the vitality of literary modernism.

An intimate portrait illuminating the life and work of Amos Oz, the award-winning Israeli writer and activist “Concise and compelling.”—Benjamin Balint, Wall Street Journal Amos Oz (1939–2018) was one of Israel’s most prolific and prominent writers, as well as a regular contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was the author of dozens of novels, essay collections, and novellas written between 1965 and shortly before his death. In this first published biography of Oz, the celebrated translator, literary critic, and biblical scholar Robert Alter explores Oz’s relationship with his family, beginning with the suicide of his mother, Fania Klausner, when he was twelve years old, and goes on to review his time in Kibbutz Hulda, which he entered at fourteen following his separation from his father, Arieh Klausner; his family’s right-wing Zionism; his writing career; his activism in support of a pluralistic Israel; and his work as an international lecturer. In examining Oz’s life and work, Alter brings together testimony from Oz and his circle, as well as close readings of his central works, to present the inner world and public persona of Amos Oz.

A masterpiece of deep learning and fine sensibility, Robert Alter’s translation of the Hebrew Bible, now complete, reanimates one of the formative works of our culture. Capturing its brilliantly compact poetry and finely wrought, purposeful prose, Alter renews the Old Testament as a source of literary power and spiritual inspiration. From the family frictions of Genesis and King David’s flawed humanity to the serene wisdom of Psalms and Job’s incendiary questioning of God’s ways, these magnificent works of world literature resonate with a startling immediacy. Featuring Alter’s generous commentary, which quietly alerts readers to the literary and historical dimensions of the text, this is the definitive edition of the Hebrew Bible.

From one of our premier literary scholars, here is a learned and witty introduction to the “sheer vitality of literature and the satisfactions of a close, informed engagement with it” (New York Times). Robert Alter’s illumination of the unique power of reading literature is especially valuable at a time when we are surrounded by electronic texts that distract more than engage and when the special claims of literature are disparaged by the high priests of literary theory. Alter explores the strategies that distinguish literature—the resources of style, the dynamics of allusion, the formal design of structure, the play of perspective in narrative. He draws on copious examples from the great works of literary art—from the Book of Genesis to Shakespeare, Conrad, and Nabokov—to illustrate his analysis of what makes reading a source of complex pleasure and insight.

Acclaimed for its masterful new translation and insightful commentary, The David Story is a fresh, vivid rendition of one of the great works in Western literature. Robert Alter's brilliant translation gives us David, the beautiful, musical hero who slays Goliath and, through his struggles with Saul, advances to the kingship of Israel. But this David is also fully human: an ambitious, calculating man who navigates his life's course with a flawed moral vision. The consequences for him, his family, and his nation are tragic and bloody. Historical personage and full-blooded imagining, David is the creation of a literary artist comparable to the Shakespeare of the history plays.

Through a distinguished career of critical scholarship and translation, Robert Alter has equipped us to read the Hebrew Bible as a powerful, cohesive work of literature. In this landmark work, Alter's masterly translation and probing commentary combine to give contemporary readers the definitive edition of The Five Books. Winner of the PEN Center USA Literary Award for Translation and the Koret Jewish Book Award for Translation, a Newsweek Top 15 Book, Los Angeles Times Favorite Book, and San Francisco Chronicle Best Book.

A cornerstone of the scriptural canon, the Book of Psalms has been a source of solace and joy for countless readers over millennia. This timeless poetry is beautifully wrought by a scholar whose translation of the Five Books of Moses was hailed as a “godsend” by Seamus Heaney and a “masterpiece” by Robert Fagles. Alter’s The Book of Psalms captures the simplicity, the physicality, and the coiled rhythmic power of the Hebrew, restoring the remarkable eloquence of these ancient poems. His learned and insightful commentary illuminates the obscurities of the text.

Since it was first published nearly three decades ago, The Art of Biblical Narrative has radically expanded the horizons of biblical scholarship by recasting the Bible as a work of literary art deserving studied criticism. Renowned critic and translator Robert Alter presents the Hebrew Bible as a cohesive literary work, one whose many authors used innovative devices such as parallelism, contrastive dialogue, and narrative tempo to tell one of the most revolutionary stories of human history: the revelation of a single god.

Three decades ago, renowned literary expert Robert Alter radically expanded the horizons of biblical scholarship by recasting the Bible as not only a human creation but a work of literary art deserving studied criticism. In The Art of Biblical Poetry , his companion to the seminal The Art of Biblical Narrative , Alter takes his analysis beyond narrative craft to investigate the use of Hebrew poetry in the Bible. Updated with a new preface, myriad revisions, and passages from Alter's own critically acclaimed biblical translations, The Art of Biblical Poetry is an indispensable tool for understanding the Bible and its poetry.

“For many serious readers,” Robert Alter writes in his preface, “the novel still matters, and I have tried here to suggest some reasons why that should be so.” In his wide-ranging discussion, Alter examines the imitation of reality in fiction to find out why mimesis has become problematic yet continues to engage us deeply as readers.Alter explores very different sorts of novels, from the self-conscious artifices of Sterne and Nabokov to what seem to be more realistic texts, such as those of Dickens, Flaubert, John Fowles, and the early Norman Mailer. Attention is also given to such individual critics as Edmund Wilson and Alfred Kazin and to current critical schools. In Alter’s essays, a particular book or movement or juxtaposition of writers provides the occasion for the exploration of a general intellectual issue. The scrutiny of well-chosen passages, the joining of images or themes or ideas, the associative and intuitive processes that lead to the right phrase and the right loop of syntax for the matter at hand-all these come together unexpectedly to illuminate both the text in question and the general issue.Recent discussions of mimesis in fiction generally proceed from a single thesis. By contrast, Motives for Fiction offers an empirical approach, attempting to define mimesis in its various guises by careful critical readings of a heterogeneous sampling of literary texts. Intelligent and good-humored, the book is also old-fashioned enough to wonder whether mimesis might not be a task or responsibility to which much contemporary fiction has not proved entirely adequate.

The simple yet grand language of the King James Bible has pervaded American culture from the beginning - and its powerful eloquence continues to be felt even today. In this book, acclaimed biblical translator and literary critic Robert Alter traces some of the fascinating ways that American novelists - from Melville, Hemingway, and Faulkner to Bellow, Marilynne Robinson, and Cormac McCarthy - have drawn on the rich stylistic resources of the canonical English Bible to fashion their own strongly resonant styles and distinctive visions of reality. Showing the radically different manners in which the words, idioms, syntax, and cadences of this Bible are woven into "Moby-Dick", "Absalom, Absalom!", "The Sun Also Rises", "Seize the Day", "Gilead", and "The Road", Alter reveals the wide variety of stylistic and imaginative possibilities that American novelists have found in Scripture. At the same time, Alter demonstrates the importance of looking closely at the style of literary works, making the case that style is not merely an aesthetic phenomenon but is the very medium through which writers conceive their worlds.

From the recipient of the National Jewish Book Award for Lifetime Achievement, a "hugely entertaining and irreverent" (Adam Gopnik, New Yorker) account of the art of translating the Hebrew Bible into EnglishIn this brief book, award-winning biblical translator and acclaimed literary critic Robert Alter offers a personal and passionate account of what he learned about the art of Bible translation over the two decades he spent completing his own English version of the Hebrew Bible.Alter’s literary training gave him the advantage of seeing that a translation of the Bible can convey the text’s meaning only by trying to capture the powerful and subtle literary style of the biblical Hebrew, something the modern English versions don’t do justice to. The Bible’s style, Alter writes, “is not some sort of aesthetic embellishment of the ‘message’ of Scripture but the vital medium through which the biblical vision of God, human nature, history, politics, society, and moral value is conveyed.” And, as the translators of the King James Version knew, the authority of the Bible is inseparable from its literary authority.For these reasons, the Bible can be brought to life in English only by re-creating its literary virtuosity, and Alter discusses the principal aspects of style in the Hebrew Bible that any translator should try to reproduce: word choice, syntax, word play and sound play, rhythm, and dialogue. In the process, he provides an illuminating and accessible introduction to biblical style that also offers insights about the art of translation far beyond the Bible.

From the recipient of the National Jewish Book Award for Lifetime Achievement, a "hugely entertaining and irreverent" (Adam Gopnik, New Yorker) account of the art of translating the Hebrew Bible into EnglishIn this brief book, award-winning biblical translator Robert Alter offers a personal and passionate account of what he learned about the art of Bible translation during the two decades he spent completing his own English version of the Hebrew Bible. Showing why the Bible and its meaning can be brought to life in English only by re-creating the subtle and powerful literary style of the original text, Alter discusses the principal aspects of biblical Hebrew that any translator should try to reproduce: word choice, syntax, word play and sound play, rhythm, and dialogue. In the process, he provides an illuminating and accessible introduction to biblical style that also offers insights about the art of translation far beyond the Bible.

From award-winning literary scholar Robert Alter, a masterful exploration of how Nabokov used artifice to evoke the dilemmas, pain, and exaltation of the human conditionAdmirers and detractors of Vladimir Nabokov have viewed him as an ingenious contriver of literary games, teasing and even outsmarting his readers through his self-reflexive artifice and the many codes and puzzles he devises in his fiction. Nabokov himself spoke a number of times about reality as a term that always has to be put in scare quotes. Consequently, many critics and readers have thought of him as a writer uninterested in the world outside literature. Robert Alter shows how Nabokov was passionately concerned with the real world and its complexities, from love and loss to exile, freedom, and the impact of contemporary politics on our lives.In these illuminating and exquisitely written essays, Alter spans the breadth of Nabokov's writings, from his memoir, lectures, and short stories to major novels such as Lolita. He demonstrates how the self-reflexivity of Nabokov's fiction becomes a vehicle for expressing very real concerns. What emerges is a portrait of a brilliant stylist who is at once serious and playful, who cared deeply about human relationships and the burden of loss, and who was acutely sensitive to the ways political ideologies can distort human values.Offering timeless insights into literature’s most fabulous artificer, Nabokov and the Real World makes an elegant and compelling case for Nabokov's relevance today.

A panorama of Hebrew prose presented in an English translation that makes these masterly works available to a wide audience.

There may be no place more blessed -- or burdened -- with narrative than Israel. In this country, story and place are inextricable. From stories set in the historical, holy city of Jerusalem to those that take place in the modern, secular city of Tel Aviv, from writing addressing the current "situation" to tales inspired by the timeless desert, this volume of sixteen short stories of Israel's finest new writers, and some of its best-loved ones, captures for the reader one of the world's most fascinating travel destinations. Contributors include Gafi Amir, Yossi Avni, Yosl Birstein, Orly Castel-Bloom, David Ehrlich, David Grossman, Shulamith Hareven, Etgar Kerrett, Yoram Kolerstein, Yitzchak Laor, Amos Oz, Ofra Riesenfeld, Gadi Taub, and A. B. Yehoshua.

Vänskapen mellan Walter Benjamin och Gershom Scholem kan ses som exemplarisk för de dilemman som stora delar av den unga tysk-judiska intelligentian i början av 1900-talet brottades med. Assimilering eller sionism, emigrera eller leva kvar i Europa? Hur förena sin judiska identitet med den tyska? De väljer olika vägar, men korresponderar med varandra ända fram till Benjamin i exil och på flykt tar sitt liv. Ett ämne som ständigt återkommer är Franz Kafka, en författare som mer än andra kan sägas ha uttryckt det moderna livets kval i allmänhet och den enskilde individens utsatthet. Robert Alter har skrivit en fascinerande studie om dessa tre väldigt olika, men på sina sätt, modernistiska författare. Robert Alter är professor i hebreiska och jämförande litteraturvetenskap vid University of California, Berkeley. Han har skrivit ett flertal böcker om Bibeln, bibeltolkning, hebreiska och senast om Vladimir Nabokov (2021). Han har dessutom översatt den hebreiska bibeln till engelska i en 3500 sidor lång utgåva med kommentarer. Hans tidigare översättning av Psaltaren kallades av Seamus Heaney för en »gudagåva«. Detta är den första boken av Alter på svenska. I översättning av Daniel Pedersen.