Israeli playwright and director Hanoch Levin was one of the most original and innovative writers of his generation. Although Levin is familiar within the Israeli cultural context--and despite the steadily growing stream of literary and theatrical research of his oeuvre--there are few resources on his work available outside of Israel. The present volume, containing a selection of ten of his plays, is the first comprehensive effort to present this unique playwright and director to a broad readership.
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Hanoch Levin, as the reports and book project say, is the most important Israeli playwright. I believe this will be the first book publication of his plays in English translation. Benjamin Harshav is Professor of Comparative Literature and J. & H. Blaustein Professor of Hebrew Language and Literature at Yale University; he is the author of The Meaning of Yiddish (California, 1990) and Language in Time of Revolution (California, 1993). I gather that the superlative comments about Barbara Harshav are simple fact-she is said to be the best translator from modern Hebrew into English in the world. Together, they put together American Yiddish Poetry: A Bilingual Anthology (California, 1986).