Preliminaries

Yizhar reasserted his position as the greatest living master of Hebrew prose with his last novel, Preliminaries. Strongly autobiographical, this sensual, powerful novel, laden with scents and colors, progresses frame by frame, showing a boy growing up in a Jewish farming community in Palestine and in the young city of Tel Aviv between the years 1917 and 1930. The primary, embryonic experiences of the boy coalesce with the adult consciousness looking back, a kind of late return to the innermost part of the child. His growth to adulthood is linked to the story of the land of Israel in the early days of Jewish settlement: the longing to create a new Jew, the harsh existence of the struggling community, early clashes between Jews and Arabs. But the real subject of Preliminaries is a child's discovery, in confusion, wonder and terror, of the concrete world around him.
Preliminaries has been translated by Nicholas de Lange of Cambridge University, one of today's outstanding translators from Hebrew to English, and is introduced by Professor Dan Miron.

S. Yizhar was a professor of education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a professor of Hebrew literature at Tel Aviv University.