7 min listen
Farewell to the Alexandrian Summer
ratings:
Length:
9 minutes
Released:
Oct 3, 2018
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
This episode originally aired Oct. 14th, 2015. In this episode, host Marcela Sulak reads an excerpt from Yitzhak Gormezano Goren's Alexandrian Summer, his first novel to be translated into English. In this semi-autobiographical work, Robby, aged ten and accompanied by his parents, leaves his home in Alexandria in 1951 to rejoin his two brothers who had already moved to Israel. In this extract, three generations of the family are sitting together in their home in Alexandria, reading a letter from Robby's brothers about what life is like in Israel. Robby's grandmother thinks it sounds a little primitive: “They say that people work in construction in Palestine. Yes, even educated boys. A grandson of mine, putting his hand inside the cemento? Wy-di-mi-no!” André Aciman says in his introduction to the novel, "Alexandrian Summer is a nostalgic, farewell portrait of a world that was fast expiring but still refused to see that history had written it off." Text: Alexandrian Summer, Yitzhak Gormezano Goren. Translated Yardenne Greenspan. New Vessel Press, 2015. Music: Dalida - Salma Ya Salama Farid Al Atrash - Wayak Umm Kulthoum - Enta Omri
Released:
Oct 3, 2018
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
I have been planted with the pines: Lea Goldberg is the best-selling poet in the history of Israel. Many of her poems express both a love of the land of Israel, as well as nostalgia for her abandoned home in the diaspora. Do you know which university department she founded and chaired?... by Israel in Translation