From Foe to Friend & Other Stories: A Graphic Novel by Shay Charka - Hardcover

Agnon, S Y

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1592643957 ISBN 13: 9781592643950

Publisher: Toby Press, 2014

Synopsis

A new English language edition of last year's very popular Hebrew book the first time Hebrew literature's only Nobel laureate has had his stories rendered in graphic form. These three tales (which retain Agnon's original prose) rendered in comics form, are among the most beloved by Israeli children now available to the English reading world in a most engaging format. The title story, an allegory about the attempt to settle the Land of Israel in old Jerusalem and to tame its wild winds, is followed by a mystical fantasy about a delightful goat and a magical cave connecting the old world of Polish Jewry to the new world of Jewish life in the Holy Land. The volume closes with a fable of The Architect and the Emperor raising questions about the relationship between an artist and his work. Drawn in a brilliant style, Charka's illustrations are themselves a form of midrash on Agnon's prose. The keen reader will find visual echoes of Marc Chagall and Edvard Munch, alongside Bob Dylan and Rav Kook.

About this title

About the Author:

S.Y. Agnon (1888-1970) was the central figure of modern Hebrew literature, and the 1966 Nobel Prize laureate for his body of writing. Born in the Galician town of Buczacz (in today's western Ukraine), as Shmuel Yosef Czaczkes, he arrived in 1908 in Jaffa, Ottoman Palestine, where he adopted the penname Agnon and began a meteoric rise as a young writer. Between the years 1912 and 1924 he spent an extended sojourn in Germany, where he married and had two children, and came under the patronage of Shlomo Zalman Schocken and his publishing house, allowing Agnon to dedicate himself completely to his craft. After a house fire in 1924 destroyed his library and the manuscripts of unpublished writings, he returned to Jerusalem where he lived for the remainder of his life. His works deal with the conflict between traditional Jewish life and language and the modern world, and constitute a distillation of millennia of Jewish writing from the Bible through the Rabbinic codes to Hasidic storytelling recast into the mold of modern literature.
Shay Charka is one of the best known Israeli caricaturists, illustrators, and authors of comics. Among his most popular books is his Talmudic comics series, Baba. His political cartoons are featured weekly in the Israeli press, and characters he has created appear on various television networks.

Review:

This important and delightful partnership between author and illustrator will introduce children (and their parents) to the magical cave of Agnon's prose. --The Jewish Review of Books

When I read Agnon's stories I see entire worlds drawn in my imagination. Worlds which contain images not described in Agnon's own words, but which unravel the riddles of his stories. I saw Agnon's autobiography woven into the story From Foe to Friend ; I saw what transpires in the cave connecting the Exile and the Land of Israel in The Fable of the Goat even though Agnon himself never tells us; I saw all three dimensions of an actual palace in the flat drawing of The Architect and the Emperor . I saw all these things and wanted to share them with you so I drew them. --Shay Charka

About this edition

• Publisher: Toby Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1592643957
• ISBN 13: 9781592643950
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 480
• Illustrator: Charka Shay