Exploring Israeli literature in English translation. Host Marcela Sulak takes you through Israel’s literary countryside, cityscapes, and psychological terrain, and the lives of the people who create it.

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Robertag-t
Robertag-t
“Wonderful exposure to contemporary Hebrew (mostly) fiction and poetry - much of which is not available or known about outside of Israel.”
POLARIS ZIONISTA
POLARIS ZIONISTA
“Excellent podcast giving exposure to the best of Israeli letters: fiction and poetry, contemporary and classic, it's an essential regular listen. Also has very well selected musical accompaniments.”
bks&poet
bks&poet
“Marcela's voice is perfect for narrating the poetry featured on this podcast. It really puts me in between the lines of text.”

Recent Episodes

“The Tunnel”

It may sound crazy, but A. B. Yehoshua has written a page-turner about an aging engineer in the early stages of dementia, which features descriptions of highway construction in great detail.

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Meir Shalev’s “My Wild Garden”

Meir Shalev's “My Wild Garden. Notes from a Writer’s Eden,” is a beautiful book, from the size and shape of the hardcopy, to the feel of the paper. Even the font type is notable. The watercolor illustrations subtly draw out the descriptions, rather than compete with them.

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Miri Ben-Simhon’s “The Absolute Reader”

The literary critic Yitzhak Laor once noted about Ben-Simhon’s work and perspective, that “In the literary arena at the beginning of the 1980s, it took a lot of courage – not to speak about Mizrahim, but as one.”

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About the Host

Marcela Sulak

Marcela is an associate professor in the Department of English Literature and Linguistics at Bar-Ilan University. She teaches American Literature, poetics, and translation, and poetry workshops in the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing. Her poetry includes Decency (2015), Immigrant (2010). She was nominated for the 2017 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, and translates from Czech, French, Spanish, German, Hebrew, and Yiddish. She’s co-edited Family Resemblance. An Anthology and Exploration of 8 Hybrid Literary Genres, and her essays appear in The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Boston Review, The Iowa Review, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere.