Israel, Literally

By S.Y. Agnon

Israel’s Nobel laureate for literature died in 1970, but he left behind a body of work that tells the story of Israel’s early Jewish pioneers, including this masterwork.

By Amos Oz

Oz, an eloquent critic of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, has written 18 works of fiction, several collections of essays, and a powerful memoir. His second novel traces the collapse of a marriage that corresponds with the souring of Israel’s vaunted idealism.

By Aharon Appelfeld

The prolific novelist imagines the famous Austrian spa town in this fable in which a group of Jewish vacationers is unable to see the impending catastrophe.

By David Grossman

A much-garlanded novelist, Grossman is also a powerful journalist. This 1987 journal of his travels through the West Bank exposes the glaring inequality, political arrogance, and mutual distrust that has been perpetuated by successive generations.

By Etgar Keret

A mainstay of NPR’s This American Life, which has featured eight of his stories, Keret specializes in crisp, compact short stories, often no more than a few pages long, which capture the insanity of contemporary Israeli life.

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