Avner Shats
me, why don't you?
Born in 1959, I live in Haifa, Israel, and work at a shipping company. My first book, "printed circuits", a collection of short stories, was published in 1994 (see ITHL). The second novel, "Sailing towards the Sunset" won the 1998 Schweipert literary award of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem (and the Haifa Cultural Fund award.)
I wrote literary reviews for Israeli daily papers "Haaretz" and "Yediot Achronot" and other publications. Contributed to "Animal Review" (in English, edited by Nell Zink) and had an internet column in Notes.
In the late 90's I translated to Hebrew an obscure novel titled "Sailing towards the Sunset by Avner Shats", by Nell Zink. No one read it. it begins as follows:
"It having become apparent that I should write a novel, my next concern became which novel I should write. An obvious choice was Avner Shats' recent debut, Sailing Towards the Sunset. "
Read more about this strange endeavor in the Guardian, New Yorker, etc. I translated other short works by Zink, three of them appeared in Israeli literary magazines (a fairytale, Prince Cuckoo, in Masmerim; a short story inspired by Kafka in "Orot"' and a short story,"The Littlest Guinea Pig: A Story of Savage Rebellion", co-translated with Zohar Eitan, in Helicon.
In 2002 I was Hebrew Writer Visiting Fellow at the Oxford Center for Hebrew and Jewish Studies in Yarnton.
I also featured in the [extremely obscure] documentary No War Last Night (Germany 2003), which chronicled the tense last few days leading up to the Iraq war.
Is man descended from the seals?
Was pirate Sasportas's wife converted to Judaism?
Can one navigate at sea by Universal Energy?
Is the female breast-size a guarantee of genetic superiority?
Answers to these questions and others are to be found in "Sailing towards the Sunset" by Avner Shats. Regrettably, you'll have to learn Hebrew in order to do read it. But it's worth it. Here is the back cover blurb - actually, I wrote it - the P.R. people at Zemora-Bitan Publishing are that lazy - but I included things other people said:
Is this a love story or a thriller? a cruise into the maze of Israeli culture or just a post-modernist game? an espionage story or an excuse for a magic journey to the Shetland Islands, a kingdom by the sea?
"Sailing towards the Sunset" evades definitions: it is at the same time funny and sad, cynical and emotional, nostalgic and skeptic, fantastic and realistic; a reading experience of a different kind.
members of the Schweipert literary award committee of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, wrote in their award recommendations (among other flattering things:)
"Shats has a virtuoso's ability to mimic artistic styles of different schools and periods, and he uses this amazing virtue to trick the reader, amuse him, and also hint at the tremendous difficulty - especially to those who grew up in present day culture - to have authentic experiences, let alone reconstructing them in writing..."Sailing towards the Sunset" is a homage to literature and literary writing, and at the same time a book full of doubts as to the power of literature to fully express our feelings and thoughts...A brilliant and sophisticated post-modernist novel."
(Chaim Gury, Prof. Igal Schwartz, Dr. Iris Parush - the Award committee)