-
An Epic of Birth, Survival, and Growth: Preliminaries, by S. Yizhar
- Hebrew Studies
- National Association of Professors of Hebrew
- Volume 52, 2011
- pp. 293-314
- 10.1353/hbr.2011.0012
- Article
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
The article traces the shared development of an individual, a people, and a universe as expressed in the eighteen episodes of Preliminaries. Each episode is a work in itself, yet at the same time, it is provisionally part of the architectural structure of the novel, which has a preface and five chapters. Each chapter (including the preface) has three episodes, a kind of triptych. The publication of the novel in 1992 came as a surprise to the Israeli reader: Yizhar had gone back to writing after thirty years of silence. The article uncovers the mode of writing and the pattern of the novel.