Israel Prize for Literature 2008

[Eric]

Here is an article that tells about the three prizewinners this year, Ida Fink, Tuvya Ruebner and Nili Mirsky:

An interesting insight into what type of people get literary prizes in Israel can be found at:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/958002.html

What interests me about this award is that Fink writes stories in Polish, Ruebner is a Hebrew poet and Mirsky is a translator.

The award appears to have three categories: literature, poetry and translation. And even someone writing in what is, in effect, a foreign language in the state of Israel (Polish, in this case) can win the local prize without discrimination. Also, a writer of short-stories wins a prize. And a translator too, mentioned in the same breath as people who write their own books.

[miriring]

Hye Eric,
It is true that Ida Fink got her prize for writing short stories in Polish, her mother tangue.
But when you read the translation of her very short stories you understand she deserves the prize.
The way she describes the horors of the hollocost with few metaphorical words have a great influence upon the reader, sometimes more than a long novel.

[Eric]

I'm not knocking Ida Fink for writing in her mother-tongue, Polish. I can, in fact, read Polish fairly well, Yiddish at lower intermediate level, but Hebrew, ah, now there's a challenge for Jews and goyim alike. I thought that Russian was actually language number three in Israel, after Hebrew and English. Yiddish appears to have taken a back seat; Polish no longer seems to score. I shall seek out Ida Fink's work next time I'm in a larger bookshop. I see that three of Fink's books are available in Dutch, perhaps my best foreign language, and at least one in Swedish.

I note the following book in which Fink has some prose:

http://www.bokus.com/b/9780803237216.html