Narrative
The Death of Lysanda
מות ליסאנדה
Yitzhak Orpaz · 1964
Synopsis
Naftali Noy, a proofreader, critic and, in his spare time, taxidermist, has withdrawn to the roof of his building. He lives there with Lysanda, the ideal woman he has invented for himself and who exists only in his head. This retreat does not hold: the other tenants harass him, and then Batya arrives, a tall, earthy woman, a massive presence who threatens the balance he had made for himself. Between the dreamed woman and the real one, the narrative slides from the ordinary boredom of a childless couple towards something that is no longer ordinary.
Context
The novella appeared in 1964 from Sifriyat Poalim, in one hundred and four pages, and was reprinted in 1972 with Nemalim and Madrega tsara in Shalosh novelot. In it the author fixed a movement that he later reused almost unchanged: the routine of a childless household, then the irruption of an unreal element that fascinates and destroys. An existentialist who believed in no higher power, he held to this path against the realism of his early work and later named it in an essay, Ha-Tsalyan ha-hiloni. The English translation appeared as early as 1970 from Jonathan Cape.
Who it is for
About a hundred pages, translated into French in 1988. It is best to know that the author wrote against the social novel of his time.
Prizes and reception
It placed Orpaz among the first prose writers of the generation of the State and marked his move to symbolic writing.
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