Novels
- Castle in Spain (1974)
- Requiem for Na’aman (1978)
- Minotaur (1981)
Collections
- Six Israeli Novellas (1998)
Novellas
- The Orchard (1984)
Anthologies edited
- Meetings with the Angel (1973)
Novels Book Covers
Collections Book Covers
Novellas Book Covers
Anthologies edited Book Covers
Benjamin Tammuz Books Overview
Minotaur
‘I was totally enchanted by Minotaur, a book that transcends time. If Chekhov were to enter the room and ask where he should begin with contemporary literature, I would put Minotaur on his reading list, with the conviction that I would be introducing him to a kindred spirit.’ Financial Times ‘A novel about the expectations and compromises that humans create for themselves…
very much in the manner of William Faulkner and Lawrence Durrell.’ The New York Times ‘After reading the last line, you feel like holding the book in your hands for a while, with love and anger, before putting it back on the shelf of timeless novels.’ Corriere della Sera ‘An uncommon and suggestive spy story, love story and much more, that charms the reader. Not to be missed.’ L’Unit An Israeli secret agent falls hopelessly in love with a young English girl. Utilizing his network of shady contacts and his professional expertise, he takes control of her life without ever revealing his identity. Minotaur, named Book of the Year in England in 1981, is a complex and utterly original story about a solitary man driven from one side of Europe to the other by his obsession. Benjamin Tammuz was born in Russia in 1919 and immigrated to Palestine with his family at the age of five. Tammuz was a sculptor as well as a diplomat, writer, and for many years, literary editor of the Ha’aretz newspaper. His numerous novels and short stories have received many literary prizes. Benjamin Tammuz died in 1989.
Six Israeli Novellas
Six Israeli Novellas offers work by six of Israel’s most important contemporary authors. Included are Aharon Appelfeld’s ‘In the Isles of St. George,’ in which a fugitive black marketeer a modern reincarnation of the eternal Wandering Jew is forced to take refuge on a desolate Italian island, where his past, his Jewishness, and his very sense of identity are resolved. In ‘Yani on the Mountain,’ David Grossman explores the psychological impact of the 1973 Yom Kippur War on a young generation of Israelis against the backdrop of a Mount Sinai army base in its final days before demolition. Ruth Almog’s ‘Shrinking’ lyrically portrays the loneliness and frustrations of a middle aged hero*ine whose longing for true human contact is thwarted by her stifling bond to her aged father. Also included are Yaakov Shabtai’s ‘Uncle Peretz Takes Flight,’ a grotesque history of the Zionist dream, in the vein of Shalom Aleichem; Yehudit Hendel’s ‘Small Change,’ about the interaction between the paranoid experience of an Israeli woman abroad and a complex father daughter relationship; and Benjamin Tammuz’s ‘My Brother,’ in which one brother’s selfish conquests are contrasted to the other’s passive, but ultimately more sinister, altruism. In the words of editor Gershon Shaked, these novellas ‘show modern Israeli fiction at its richest and most diversified, with a character all its own.’ Verba Mundi
The Orchard
The Orchard plots the story of two brothers a Jew and a Muslim on the mythic ground of Palestine and against the historical background of the region from the closing days of the Ottoman occupation to the Israeli Egyptian war of 1956. It is a tale of fratricide and incest, and the haunting, Biblical rhythms of the prose remind us that it tells an old, old story of violence and loss.
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