`Extraordinary … a tribute to the power of critical thought to register the injustices of history’ –Guardian

‘Exhilarating … How often can you say of a harrowing, unquiet book that it makes you wrestle with your soul’ –The Times

‘A mesmerising and prophetic testimony that unfolds with a magnificent, biblical simplicity’ –Independent

`Poetic, anguished and uncompromising … the lyricism of the writing has been beautifully captured’ –Times Literary Supplement

‘[A] luminous account … Khirbet Khizet remains painfully relevant, and the moral questioning lives on’
–Ian McEwan

S. YIZHAR was the pen name of Yizhar Smilansky, born in Rehovot, Palestine in 1916. A longtime member of Knesset for the Mapai (Labor) party, he is perhaps most famous as the author of Khirbet Khizeh and the 1,156-page magnum opus, Days of Tziklag, about the 1948 war. After winning the Israel Prize in 1959, he taught education at the Hebrew University for many years and lapsed into literary silence until 1992, when he published the first of a trilogy of autobiographical novels, Preliminaries. He died in 2006. NICHOLAS DE LANGE, who is professor of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at Cambridge University, has translated many Hebrew novels, most recently Preliminaries by S. Yizhar (2007). YAACOB DWECK has previously translated Haim Sabato’s The Dawning of the Day (2006). DAVID SHULMAN teaches Sanskrit and other Indian languages at the Hebrew University. He has published numerous books and is the author of Dark Hope: Working for Peace in Israel and Palestine (2007). Shulman was named a MacArthur Fellow in 1987.