An edition of Ḥaruze ha-ḥayim ṿeha-maṿet (2008)

Rhyming Life and Death

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Last edited by MARC Bot
August 19, 2021 | History
An edition of Ḥaruze ha-ḥayim ṿeha-maṿet (2008)

Rhyming Life and Death

  • 4 Want to read

Reality and fiction blend in an ingenious Rothian short novel from the celebrated author of A Tale of Love and Darkness - witty but elegiac, playful and sexy but somehow deadly serious, it's about a bored writer who goes to a reading and has a brief sexual skirmish with a female reader. Or does he?The novel centres around 8 hours in the life of the Author (unnamed), a literary celebrity in his forties, who is in Tel Aviv on a stifling hot night to give a reading. Bored, he looks for distraction - and finds copy. On the way he stops at a cafe where he 'bumps into' some of his own characters. In his head he conjures up the life stories of the people he meets, not least Ricky, an equally bored but seductive waitress. Later, even as the reading from his new book is underway, and the obligatory inane questions ("Why do you write? Do you write with a pen or on a computer?) have come and gone — he weaves stories round the audience and the panel. Afterwards, the Author invites the professional reader for a drink before walking her home. It turns out she lives just opposite, so she goes home and he wanders off into the night. But he returns, climbs the many flights of stairs to the flat, where she lives alone with her cat - and they have a brief but steamy sexual skirmish. Or is this merely a middle-aged writer's fantasy? We never quite know where reality ends and invention begins. He spends the rest of the night wandering, smoking, inventing, regretting and thinking till dawn. The Rhyming of the title refers to the popular couplets of a Hebrew poet, once a household name but now virtually forgotten, whose little rhymes about life punctuate the story. At dawn, the Author reads in yesterday's paper that the poet has just died, almost unnoticed.This is a gem of a work by a master, about writing, reading, growing old and the elusive chimera of literary posterity.

Publish Date
Publisher
Mariner Books
Pages
128

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Previews available in: English

Edition Availability
Cover of: Rhyming Life and Death
Rhyming Life and Death
2010, Penguin Random House
in English
Cover of: Rhyming Life and Death
Rhyming Life and Death
Apr 26, 2010, Mariner Books
paperback
Cover of: Rhyming life and death
Rhyming life and death
2009, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
in English
Cover of: Rhyming Life and Death
Rhyming Life and Death
2009, Random House Publishing Group
eBook in English
Cover of: Rhyming life and death
Rhyming life and death
2009, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
in English
Cover of: Rhyming life and death
Rhyming life and death
2009, Chatto & Windus
in English
Cover of: Versos de vida y muerte
Versos de vida y muerte
2008, siruela
Cover of: Rifmy zhizni i smerti
Rifmy zhizni i smerti
2008, Amfora
in Russian

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Book Details


Classifications

Library of Congress
PJ5054.O9 H3713 2010eb

The Physical Object

Format
paperback
Number of pages
128

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL27673728M
Internet Archive
rhyminglifedeath0000ozam_s0b8
ISBN 10
0547336241
ISBN 13
9780547336244
Amazon ID (ASIN)
0547336241

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History

Download catalog record: RDF / JSON
August 19, 2021 Edited by MARC Bot import existing book
August 19, 2021 Edited by MARC Bot import existing book
December 5, 2020 Edited by Lisa Merge works
February 13, 2020 Edited by MARC Bot remove fake subjects
December 9, 2009 Created by WorkBot add works page