The Book
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The Book is not quite a novel, although almost half of it takes the form of a narrative, neither is it an essay, although quite a lot of what is said in it adopts that style. It is actually closest to that rare type or "para-genre" of satirical prose embodied in the exemplary In Praise of Folly by the famous humanist from Rotterdam. Instead of the "Folly," of human manias and absurdities, here, in a similar kind of double-talk, the books themselves "speak," those monuments to our intelligence, ambitions and self-importance, and they primarily "speak" by making an analogy between man's fate and that of books--to man's detriment, of course.
Tamar Yellin
Translated by
Tamar Yellin received the Pusey and Ellerton Prize for Biblical Hebrew from Oxford University, and has worked as a teacher and lecturer in Judaism. Her first novel, The Genizah at the House of Shepher, was awarded the 2007 Sami Rohr Prize for Literature from the Jewish Book Council, the Ribalow Prize from Hadassah Magazine and was short-listed for the Wingate Prize from Jewish Quarterly. She lives in Yorkshire, England.
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