Seeds in the Desert

Fiction. Jewish Studies. Short Stories. Translated by Heather Valencia. Available for the first time in translation, Mendel Mann's stories follow his life in reverse, from Israel in the 1950s to his experiences in the post-War Soviet Union and his childhood in Poland. With psychological insight and a focus on the tension between remembrance and reinvention, Mann provides indelible portraits of survivors as they confront the past and struggle to create a meaningful existence in the fledgling state of Israel.'You must hear me out: ' The urgent need to tell their stories drives several characters in this collection to force listeners into hearing something they would rather not know. Acclaimed Yiddish writer Mendel Mann tries to make sense of his own experience and that of his troubled twentieth century in these haunting accounts of men and women under pressure of love, war, vengeance and memory in places as far afield as the German-Russian war zone and a Bedouin desert encampment. Thanks to the Yiddish Book Center for bringing these stories to light.--Ruth Wisse, Emerita Professor of Yiddish Literature, Harvard UniversityIn these stories of disorientation and yearning, Mendel Mann traces the life of a survivor working backward--from coping, to trauma, to naiveté--in a Yiddish-language trajectory across time and place. By translating experiences from Poland, the Soviet Union, and Israel into his mother tongue, Mann also translates multilingual realities into literary form, recording the travails of an Eastern European Jew across the landscapes of the early to mid-20th century.--David Stromberg, Editor of In the Land of Happy Tears: Yiddish Tales for Modern Times