The fact that, as in his previous book, the pieces in Epstein’s Lunar Savings Time are framed as “stories” is not unimportant because the framing forces the reader to adopt a certain position by focusing on the narrative thread. Indeed, with very few exceptions, all the pieces in this collection, no matter how short, “tell a story.” Even the exceptions could be called, technically speaking, “stories,” because there is something happening in them: “The last man in the world wrote the last haiku in the world;” or: “The ghost was still breastfeeding.”

There are two major influences that are obvious in this collection: Borges and Kafka. The references to Borges are indirect, and can be detected in a structure many of the pieces have, in which a story and its main protagonist become a tangent to another story with another protagonist, so that each story appears as the fragment of another, bigger story. On the other hand, Kafka’s name appears many times, as well as those of other famous real people, such as Heidegger, Stephen Hawking, Yuri Gagarin, Emily Dickinson, or mythological Greek heroes, which are appropriated in made-up contexts. For instance, the narrator’s grandmother, Rosa, “kissed Yuri Gagarin in 1961 in an elevator in Moscow.” The narrator’s grandparents are a recurrent presence, usually in the company of some famous characters, or else in a well-known historical context (the Holocaust), so one has the feeling of participating in the mythologized remaking of a life story. Like Borges, Epstein reinvents the truth, the real, and even history, by fictionalizing them (which is not to say that his stories don’t include many real facts).

A technique Epstein often uses is the parody of the logic of legends. Thus, “On the Metamorphosis” begins with “Once upon a time there was a tree who [. . .] fell in love with a woman who passed through the forest,” but a few lines into the story, the logic changes. The narrator steps out of the frame, and the fiction turns into meta-fiction, giving us only “one of the versions of this legend.” Then, the story goes back to its previous logic—“the tree returns to the forest of his birth“—only to serve us a hilarious tongue-in-cheek ending—“where he hangs himself.”

One of my favorite stories is “Franz Kafka, the Lost Years. A Draft of an Impossible Novel,” in which Epstein imagines an alternative life for Kafka, which is both very funny and sad—and quite . . . plausible. Kafka marries Dora; they make plans to emigrate to America, but then she becomes pregnant. In 1941 the two of them and their daughter are sent to a concentration camp, where Kafka’s small consolation is “the weather report of one of the camp newspapers, which, every day, accurately predicts most of the expected weather in [. . .] London, Tokyo and New York.” His wife and daughter die, and in 1944 Kafka is sent to Auschwitz. He survives and sails to Palestine, where he Hebraizes his name to Ephraim Kaspi and gets a job at Bank Mizrahi. Years later, he has an encounter with Max Brod, who has kept some of his stories, but Kafka doesn’t care. Says Brod: “You ungrateful bastard. It’s too bad that the Nazis didn’t kill you.” In his last years, Kafka spends his time going to the beach and the cinema, buys a camera and a record player. He travels to Jerusalem, which he finds “more beautiful than a postcard.” Eventually, and predictably, he dies.

Daniela Hurezanu has reviewed for us several times in the past, and here’s her official bio, courtesy of Words Without Borders:

Daniela Hurezanu has a Ph.D. in Romance languages and literatures and taught French for ten years at several universities in the United States. She has authored a book of literary criticism and scholarly articles in magazines such as The Romanic Review, Post-Scriptum.ORG, Orbis Litterarum, and ±Ê³ó°ùé²¹³Ù¾±±ç³Ü±ð. She has published translations in Metamorphoses, Manoa, Field, Exquisite Corpse, New Orleans Review, and Circumference, and her original work has appeared or is forthcoming in LittéRéalité, Pacific Review and Prairie Schooner. In 2004 she received a Francophone award for short stories.

Even if we weren’t interested in Alex Epstein’s work (we are!), we’d review this based solely on our respect and admiration for Clockroot Books (stellar press) and Becka McKay (one of the friendliest and funniest and most talented of all contemporary translators). Here’s the opening of Daniela’s review:

Becka Mara McKay is slowly becoming one of our most reliable translators from the Hebrew. Her most recent translation, Lunar Savings Time (2011) comes as a counterpart to Blue Has no South (2010), both by Alex Epstein, and available from Clockroot Books. The two books complement each other not only physically, but also because they could be part of the same book. Published as “stories,” they would be probably categorized as prose poem or flash fiction collections by most American readers and writers.

The fact that, as in his previous book, the pieces in Epstein’s Lunar Savings Time are framed as “stories” is not unimportant because the framing forces the reader to adopt a certain position by focusing on the narrative thread. Indeed, with very few exceptions, all the pieces in this collection, no matter how short, “tell a story.” Even the exceptions could be called, technically speaking, “stories,” because there is something happening in them: “The last man in the world wrote the last haiku in the world;” or: “The ghost was still breastfeeding.”

There are two major influences that are obvious in this collection: Borges and Kafka. The references to Borges are indirect, and can be detected in a structure many of the pieces have, in which a story and its main protagonist become a tangent to another story with another protagonist, so that each story appears as the fragment of another, bigger story. On the other hand, Kafka’s name appears many times, as well as those of other famous real people, such as Heidegger, Stephen Hawking, Yuri Gagarin, Emily Dickinson, or mythological Greek heroes, which are appropriated in made-up contexts.

Click here to read the entire review.

Israeli author Suzane Adam is joined by her translator Becka Mara McKay for a reading from her novel Laundry and a conversation about the translation process.

Laundry is a novel of psychological suspense that focuses on family relationships and the aftermath of childhood trauma. Introspective Ildiko revisits her childhood in the 1960s in a small, village in Transylvania. Now, after her immigration to Israel and the process of growing up and adapting, the repressed nightmares from the past return and threaten to destroy the bonds of love and security she has built in the intervening years. As her story unfolds—and with it the parallel stories of her family—we come to understand the mysterious, violent event that begins the novel, and to see how Ildiko’s story has come full circle. Laundry is a psychological thriller driven by characters whose lives were shaped by the Holocaust.

Suzane Adam was born in Satu Mare, Transylvania, and came to Israel at the age of ten. She published her first novel, Laundry, in 2000, followed by Mayamiya in 2002 and Janis’s Mother in 2004. In 2006, she was awarded the Kugel Prize for Janis’s Mother. Her work has been translated in German and English.

Becka Mara McKay’s poetry and translations have appeared in ACM, American Letters, and Commentary, Columbia, Controlled Burn, Cranky, eXchanges, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Third Coast, small spiral notebook, TWO LINES, and elsewhere. In 2004 she received a fellowship from the American Literary Translators Association. In 2006 she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Cosponsored with Magers and Quinn Booksellers, The Office of Cultural Affairs at the Consulate General of Israel, and Words Without Borders.

The novel begins en media res with a narrative that hints towards a tragic event that has occurred and the confusion and concern that it has caused to those observing its aftermath. The structure of the novel progresses into a story told from the beginning, a story that will explain the recent tragic event, which is both the novel’s opening and its conclusion, but begins when the main character is a five-year-old with curious violet eyes. The narrative itself is clear and seems almost effortless in its moving pace and mesmerizing plot, a seamlessness which the reader may contribute to both Adam and her translator, Becka Mara McKay.

The novel depicts Ildiko, a quiet, introspective woman, curled on her couch, unmoving and silent, after she returns home from the hospital under vague circumstances. The narrator states: “For two days I’ve been trying to persuade her to speak, but she won’t, she can’t. There is so much despair in her eyes.” The reader is already questioning what could have happened to this woman, but the reader soon learns that Ildiko does intend to speak, and more than she has ever done so:

She is making pleats in the edge of the blanket, fold upon fold, her hands shaking, I’ll tell everything, from the beginning, she says in a voice I don’t recognize. It’s not me she’s talking to. I’m afraid to move, I don’t want to disturb her concentration. Slowly, slowly, minutes pass, she lifts her head up, fixes her gaze on a corner of the ceiling. Syllables, letters. Sentences take shape from the words she is speaking. I hear; I don’t understand, wait, from the beginning? No, from the end, the end is so terrible, she should start at the end, what is she talking about? Words, flat, monotonous, one after the other. She’s reciting from inside herself, a story no one knows . . .

Her loved ones realize that Ildiko hid more in her quiet, unassuming manner than they could ever comprehend. Ildilko is an observer, first and foremost, highlighted by her interest in painting as a way for her to reflect on the world without actually engaging in it.

This novel is Ildiko’s breaking of the ever-present silence and submissiveness of her life, her inability to speak to others about her traumatic experience. Silence is a pervasive theme incorporated throughout the novel with all of the characters. Ildiko’s parents, survivors of the Holocaust, live their life by the motto: “What happened, happened.” They refrain from recounting their tragedies simply because they are in the past. In a similar fashion, Ildiko keeps silent about her horrific childhood incident of being dragged to the slaughterhouse by Yutzi, her family’s adored “foster-child.” Ildiko’s silent fear of Yutzi and her threats are mollified when her family emigrates from Transylvania to Israel, a mimicry of the author’s childhood emigration, when Yutzi’s reign of terror over Ildiko is forced to end. Ildiko and her parent’s silence is the silence of survivors, a silence that must be broken in order to truly leave the past in the past; a silence that threatens their very being until the internal has been manifested in a form that can be understood, so that people can understand that what happened, happened, but needs to be told, and from the beginning.