Novels
I’m delighted to share that my newly translated novel "Der Preis" is published by the Berlin-based publisher PalmArtPress Verlag. The translation, completed by Helen Seidler, was supported by two translation grants.
What is the book about? The awarding of a German prize for Hebrew literature throws the relationship between an Israeli living in Berlin and his German girlfriend into chaos.
Die Ankündigung, den renommierten Berliner Preis für hebräische Belletristik zu erhalten, stürzt den in Berlin lebenden Schriftsteller Israeli Chesi in Mati Shemoelof „Der Preis“ ins Chaos. Eine Übersetzung ins Deutsche, zahlreiche Einladungen zu Veranstaltungen und nicht zuletzt das Preisgeld über 750.000 Euro würden Chesis Leben mit einem Schlag einfacher machen. Doch ausgerechnet am Tag der frohen Kunde erleidet seine Freundin Helena eine Fehlgeburt. Das berufliche Glück wird vom privaten Unglück überschattet und schnell stellt sich heraus, dass diese Wunde tiefliegender Konflikte zwischen dem Paar aufreißt. Unter Chesis fehlender emotionaler Unterstützung leidend, verlässt Helena die gemeinsame Wohnung. Während sie versucht, ihre Gedanken und Wünsche zu sortieren, ereilt Chesi die nächste schlechte Nachricht: In Israel regt sich Widerstand gegen seinen Erhalt des Preises und diesen im Allgemeinen, es wird zum Boykott aufgerufen. In Interviews verheddert sich Chesi in Vorwurfen und Klarstellungen und versinkt immer mehr im Strudel der Aufregung. Seine Literatur und sein Privatleben werden zum Politikum
„Shemoelof schreibt ohne Pathos, aber voller Kraft. Sein Roman ist ein intimes und gleichzeitig politisches Porträt einer diasporischen Existenz.“
— Ralph Tarayil, Berliner Zeitung
„In DER PREIS gelingt es Shemoelof, die fragmentierte Identität eines Mizrahi-Juden in der deutschen Gegenwartsliteratur zu verankern – ein seltener, mutiger Ton, der in Berlin so dringend gebraucht wird.“
— Dr. Yemima Hadad, Stadtsprachen Magazin
Mati Shemoelof „Der Preis“ ist eine kritische, aber auch humorvolle Auseinandersetzung mit der Frage, wie privat bzw. politisch Literatur sein kann. Der Roman beschreibt die verschiedenen Perspektiven des israelischen Protagonisten Chesi, seiner deutschen Freundin Helena und der irakisch-jüdischen Mutter Amira.
Das Buch ist jetzt bei PalmArtPress erschienen. Die Übersetzung wurde mit einem Arbeitsstipendium des Deutschen Übersetzerfonds gefördert. Veröffentlicht mit Unterstützung des Israelischen Instituts für Hebräische Literatur, Israel, und dem Israeli Translation Fund. Pressemitteilung
Pardes publishers, haifa, 2021
the prize
In 2016, the German government announces a new prize for Hebrew writers around the world, the Berlin Prize for Hebrew Literature, which will return the Hebrew Literary Center to Berlin, and budget it for an inconceivable amount. Chezi, an Israeli-Jewish writer of Iraqi descent who came to Berlin following his love for his German wife Helena, is the first winner of the award - for his book "Staying in Baghdad". On the morning of the victory, while Helena is having an abortion, a political storm arises in Israel due to his winning the prize.
“The Prize” is a wild, honed and poignant satire about the literary industry - from the time the book was written to the days it was published, including editing and translating, distributing, publishing and submitting awards - and at the same time a touching novel about love and parenting, adolescence and identity. Shemoelof moves between these two axes - the soft and the sharpened - with admirable virtuosity, as he mobilizes alongside him a surge of humor, wisdom and daring.
The novel "The Prize" was on the final list of books nominated for the Shulamit Aloni's literary prize (2022) | Reviews, Articles that were written about the book (German).
See the book | Exposé | Handlung | Politisch-kultureller Inhalt | Hintergrund
An interview with Yakir Englander on "New book network", 19.07.2021 - Talking (English) on the novel "The Prize". Listen!
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Kinneret Zmora publishers, Tel-Aviv, 2014
Remnants of the Cursed Book AND OTHER STORIES
Edited by Professor Yigal Schwartz and Tamar Bialik / Zmora Bitan Publishers
The Israeli poet Mati Shemoelf’s debut short story collection features the following characters: a fictional character seeking revenge on the writer that got her pregnant and gave her AIDS; an emerging writer that decides to reveal a famous author’s affairs in order to promote her book; an artist who dies during a routine procedure and tells the story of his life to a dancer who really wanted to become a poet; a Greek philosopher that twitted in his Twitter account; a frustrated Israeli writer in post-apocalyptic Berlin who finds the protagonist of his former novel seated beside him at a bar; an aging writer who sells his soul to the devil, and more...
These characters and many others reside on the margins of the literary world, pounding on its door in a desperate plea for acceptance, love and acknowledgment in the face of their flaws. Their voices collide, collapse and reflect each other, converging momentarily only to shatter to pieces again. Love and death, identity and violence, exile and homecoming all blend together in these stories, which are packed with bone-chilling figures, doubles, twins, clones, gender and identity swaps and varying states of consciousnesses.
Using hybrid language, a mix of unrestrained prose and poetic fiction, Shemoelof traps his readers in a labyrinth that is simultaneously a post-modern gothic, nightmare and a haunted romance. He floods the reader with a merciless form of fiction that is demanding, tyrannical and does not aim to please, but at the same time also irresistible, and one finds it hard to remain indifferent to its wild charm.
Professor Yigal Schwartz, Editor of the Collection
“After reading four lines my mind was made up. With some authors you need to read the entire book to see if you like it...and then there are others where you can immediately recognize a new voice that you like very much. And I think that Mati opens his mind for us and whoever reads his book can see his mind, all exposed...I have to say that after Eliana Almog [an emerging Israeli author], something new is happening [in the Israeli literary scene], there is a group of young people that are changing, becoming part of something very new, it’s a leap, a change that is happening in giant steps, it doesn’t contradict whatever came before it, but it’s a sea change. It’s happening with Mizrahi roots, and most of the authors are more cosmopolitan than their predecessors and they deal with other mediums. And a leap is considered frightening.
And you think that the road between one milestone and another is often long and unclear, it’s not a safe move. With A.B. Yehoshua you know exactly where you’re going and when. Whereas here you have certain things that you have no idea where they came from, and it’s part of the pleasure, the challenge and the fun about this book.
Yigal Schwartz is Professor of Literature at the Ben-Gurion University in Israel. He has been editor in chief of Kinneret Zmora-Bitan Dvir Books since 2007.