Yizhar Smilansky, who wrote under the pen-name of S. Yizhar, was the best of the Israeli prose writers for whom Hebrew is a first language, as distinct from those who emigrated to Palestine from Eastern Europe. Though he was never a celebrity, either in Israel or internationally, his death in 2006 occasioned a handful of translations of his work into English.

LRB 26 February 2009 | PDF Download