Nathan Shaham

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Nathan Shaham in Kibbutz Beit Alfa, November 2000

Nathan Shaham ( Hebrew נתן שחם; * January 29, 1925 as Nathan Steinman in Tel Aviv , Palestine (League of Nations mandate) ; † June 18, 2018 ) was an Israeli writer .

life and work

Nathan Shaham was born in Tel Aviv in 1925. He is the son of the writer Eliezer Steinman, who immigrated with his family to the League of Nations area of ​​Palestine in 1924. Shaham became a member of Kibbutz Beit Alfa in 1945 , where he still lives today. During the Israeli War of Independence in 1948 he fought in an elite Palmach unit . From 1977 to 1980 he was an Israeli cultural attaché in New York. He was then Vice President of the Israel Broadcasting Authority and Chief Editor of the Sifriat Poalim Publishing House .

Shaham has published more than 40 books, mostly novels, but also volumes of stories and children's books; he also wrote several plays. Shaham belonged to a group of realistically writing authors in the 1950s who put a fictional story into a clear realistic frame of reference. Some readers discussed and argued over details with the authors as if it were documentary material. Shaham went into this in the book Ha-Elim Atzelim (1949) and stated that he would deviate from reality from time to time, but remain true to it overall and follow the principles of socialist realism . Gershon Shaked characterizes Shaham's genre in the first decades of his work as a "sociological novel" because the social material dominates over other components. Instead of focusing on a specific protagonist or topic, the author deals with different social groups. For example, he describes the kibbutz society with its norms and how European immigrants get used to kibbutz life. Shaham's Zionist-Socialist beliefs are reflected in some of his works, and so he has received praise from left-wing reviewers; on the other hand, other reviewers called for more complex novel heroes and assessed his work more critically. In the late 1960s, Shaham tried to revitalize the realistic novel by describing characters in a more complex way and looking at social issues from different perspectives; this includes the relationship between the individual and the group in the kibbutz or the reparation payments from Germany. Shaham's characters talk a lot; This also applies to the Roman Rosendorf Quartet , his literarily most interesting book, which was very well received by the critics.

Individual works

Rosendorf-Quartett , Hebrew Revi'iyat Rosendorf (1987), describes the acclimatization attempts of the five main characters, four members of a string quartet and a writer, who emigrated as Jews from Nazi Germany to the Mandate Palestine in the 1930s . Tensions arise because the four men in the group love the same woman, violist Eva Staubenfeld, and each of them deals with their love and disappointment in their own way. In addition, the group is divided in its attitude to Eretz Israel , Friedman is the only staunch Zionist among them, two others reject Zionism and see it as a doomed nonsense. Kurt Rosendorf, the quartet's founder, regards music as his true home country. Shaham uses the technique of changing perspectives and often describes the same event from different narrative perspectives . Egon Loewenthal, the writer of the group of five, appears as the narrator. Shaham also tries to create the impression of a non-fictional text by inserting letters and diary passages.

As a sequel to the Rosendorf Quartet , the novel Tzilo Shel Rosendorf was published in 2001 (only in Hebrew), which takes place from 1973 to 1975 and describes exciting entanglements. The main character is the historian Arnon Rosen, the son of the violinist Kurt Rosendorf. He wants to write a dissertation on Nazi Germany, but also to research some of his father's secrets and other people from his generation. Arnon learns that a half-sister from his father's previous marriage lives in Frankfurt, and he visits her.

Awards (selection)

  • 1958: Shlonsky Prize
  • 1988 Bialik Prize
  • 1992: American National Jewish Book Award for Fiction
  • 1993: Neuman Prize
  • 2005: ADAI WIZO Prize (Italy) for The Rosendorf Quartet
  • 2007: Prime Minister's Prize
  • 2012: Israel Prize for Achievement in Hebrew Literature and Poetry

Works in German translation

  • Rosendorf Quartet . Novel. From the Heb. Translated by Mirjam Pressler , Dvorah-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1990. As paperback: Insel-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1994

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ הסופר והמחזאי נתן שחם הלך לעולמו בגיל 93 ( Hebrew ) June 18, 2018.
  2. ↑ a b c Gershon Shaked: History of Modern Hebrew Literature p. 295
  3. ↑ a b Nathan Shaham at ITHL
  4. ↑ Shaham, Nathan at web.stanford.edu
  5. ^ Gershon Shaked: History of Modern Hebrew Literature, p. 243
  6. ↑ a b c Gershon Shaked: History of Modern Hebrew Literature p. 296
  7. ^ Gershon Shaked: History of Modern Hebrew Literature, p. 297
  8. ^ The Rosendorf Quartet at ITHL
  9. ↑ Rosendorf's Shadow at ITHL
personal data
SURNAME Shaham, Nathan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES נתן שחם (Hebrew)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Israeli writer
DATE OF BIRTH January 29, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Tel Aviv , Palestine (League of Nations Mandate)
DATE OF DEATH June 18, 2018