Join us as we examine contemporary Israeli fiction and the role of politics within it. Does life in such a politically-charged environment influence the kind of fiction and other art forms created within it? What is the role of authors in such an environment? Are they expected to deal with it, have an obligation to do so? Or perhaps a burden, a monkey on their back that they are not allowed to escape from? Through a series of examples and case studies, from his own and his peers' work and experience, Assaf Gavron shows how contemporary Israeli writers deal with these and other questions, both in their fiction and beyond it.
Assaf Gavron was Born in 1968, and published six novels (Ice, Moving, Almost Dead, Hydromania, The Hilltop and Eighteen Lashes), a collection of short stories (Sex in the cemetery), and a non-fiction collection of Jerusalem falafel-joint reviews (Eating Standing Up). His fiction has been translated into 12 languages. His latest English translation, The Hilltop, was published in 2014 by Scribner. Among the awards he won are the Israeli Prime Minister’s Creative Award for Authors, the Israeli Bernstein Prize for The Hilltop, the DAAD artists-in-Berlin fellowship in Germany, the Buch Fur Die Stadt award in Germany for CrocAttack and the Prix Courrier International award in France for the same novel. His fiction was adapted for the stage in Habima – Israel’s national theatre, and five of his novels were optioned for film or TV by Israeli and international film producers. As a translator of fiction, Gavron is responsible for the highly-regarded English-to-Hebrew translations of J.D. Salinger’s Nine Stories, Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint and Jonathan Safran Foer’s novels, among others. Gavron was the chief writer of the prize-winning computer game Peacemaker and has contributed to numerous newspapers and magazines in Israel and around the world. He is the founder of Israel’s national writers’ and poets’ soccer team. He teaches creative writing in universities in the US and in Israel. He is the singer and main songwriter of cult pop group The Foot and Mouth. The group released five albums, six years apart from each other. The next album will be out in 2019. Son of English immigrants, he grew up in a small village near Jerusalem, and currently lives in Tel Aviv, Israel. He lived in the US, UK, Canada and Germany.
