Writers in keffiyehs who don't want to be translated into Hebrew
Han Kang (Getty)
the cases
From Nobel Prize winner Han Kang to Pulitzer Prize winners Jumpa Lahiri and Hisham Mattar: literary figures don't want their books sold in Israel. Since the war began, the number of cases has increased exponentially.
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American Katie Kitamura (Bollati Boringhieri), Swedish author Fredrik Backman (Mondadori), British author Max Porter (Sellerio), Pulitzer Prize winners Jhumpa Lahiri (Guanda), and Hisham Matar have one thing in common: they don't want their books translated into Hebrew . Before the war, there were one or two cases a year of writers refusing translation into Hebrew for political reasons. The first was Alice Walker, the author of "The Color Purple." Today, there are countless, according to the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. Like the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature winner, South Korean Han Kang . Since winning the Nobel, Kang has been contacted by several Israeli publishers. Her agent's letter in response to the latest request from Yoav Reiss, the Israeli publisher of Persimmon, reads: "Kang does not wish her work to be presented in Israel." As Chilean Isabel Allende has just decided. Then there are renowned writers, like Irish writer Sally Rooney , who go from refusing to be translated into Hebrew to defending guerrilla attacks on Jewish businesses. A Jewish business in Stamford Hill, London, was vandalized, its windows smashed, its doors and walls daubed with red paint, by Palestine Action, the pressure group Rooney raves about in the Guardian ("I admire and support Palestine Action wholeheartedly and will continue to do so even if it becomes a terrorist act"). Keir Starmer's government has just designated Palestine Action a terrorist group.
You're nobody in literary high society if you don't wear a keffiyeh . Rushdie's stamina ("if there were a Palestinian state, it would be similar to that of the Taliban") and Houellebecq's serotonin ("if Israel stops fighting, it will disappear") are rare. Which is what the new book arsonists want. German novelist Maxim Biller (whose Italian title is "The Wrong Greeting") explains it in an article in Zeit. Biller's article, titled "Morbus Israel," was removed from the site after the controversy . Biller attacks the good Westerners who transform Israelis into "medieval child murderers and modern-day war criminals." "Apologists for Islam," writes Biller, whose ideal Jew is the "stunted and educated one who presents himself politely before the gas chamber or who the Iranian Revolutionary Guard turns into atomic dust." Harsh, but fair.
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