Autumn 2009 Catalogue 4 pdfing:1 - Yale University Press

62 LiteratureThe End ofEverythingDavid Bergelson • Translatedand Edited by Joseph ShermanOriginally published in 1913,The End of Everything is one ofthe great novels of the twentiethcentury. Considered DavidBergelson’s masterpiece, it waswritten in Yiddish and until nowhas been unavailable in acomplete and accurate Englishtranslation. This version byacclaimed translator Joseph Sherman finally brings the novel toa wide English-speaking audience.Bergelson depicts the lives of upwardly mobile, self-awarenouveaux riche Jews in the waning years of the Russian Empire.In a unique prose style of unsurpassable range and beauty,Bergelson reduces language to its bare essentials, punctuated bysilences that heighten the sense of alienation in the story.A Russian Yiddish novelist, David Bergelson was one of thethirteen defendants at the infamous trial of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee held in Moscow in 1952. Translator, JosephSherman, is currently Corob Fellow in Yiddish Studies at OxfordCentre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies at Oxford University.New Yiddish Library SeriesFebruary 256 pp. 210x140mm.Paper ISBN 978-0-300-11067-8 £15.00*Joseph in EgyptA Cultural Icon fromGrotius to GoetheBernhard LangThe biblical story of Joseph ranksin the history of world literaturealongside The Odyssey and otherancient legends as a canonical textand has provided rich material forwriters to imitate and elaborate.This book, by Bernard Lang, anacclaimed biblical scholar,examines the many and varied ways that the story of Joseph hasbeen interpreted in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe.During that time, Joseph was heralded as an icon by manywriters and thinkers, among them Henry Fielding, Voltaire,Chateaubriand and Goethe, who found his story relevant.Educators commended Joseph as a model of piety, moralistsextolled him in defense of chastity, political philosophers regardedhim as an exemplary leader, while historians debated variouslywhether he was a benefactor, tyrant or merely a character in anancient tale. Lang examines a range of texts—novels, stage plays,poems, children’s books and critical treatises—to illuminate thedebt each owes to earlier versions of the Joseph story.Bernhard Lang is Professor of Religion at the University ofPaderborn, Germany. He is the author of Sacred Games:A History of Christian Worship and The Hebrew God:Portrait of an Ancient Deity, and co-author of Heaven:A History, all published by Yale.September 400 pp. 234x156mm. 12 b/w illus.ISBN 978-0-300-15156-5 £30.00German rights: held by the authorCelestinaFernando de RojasTranslated byMargaret Sayers PedenEdited and with an Introductionby Roberto González EchevarríaA timeless story of love, moralityand tragedy, Fernando de Rojas’sCelestina is a classic of Spanishliterature. Second only toDon Quixote in its culturalimportance, Rojas’s dramaticdialogue presents the elaboratetale of a star-crossed courtship between the young noblemanCalisto and the beautiful maiden Melibea in fifteenth-centurySpain. Their unforgettable saga plays out in vibrant exchanges,presented here in a brilliant new translation by award-winningtranslator Margaret Sayers Peden. At times a comic character andat others a promoter of women’s sexual license, Celestina is aninimitable personality with a surprisingly modern consciousness,certain to be relished by a new generation of readers.Margaret Sayers Peden is Professor Emerita of Spanish at theUniversity of Missouri and the translator of major works byOctavio Paz, Pablo Neruda, Isabel Allende and others.Roberto González Echevarría is Sterling Professor of Hispanicand Comparative Literature, Yale University.The Margellos World Republic of LettersOctober 288 pp. 107x127mm. 21 b/w illus.ISBN 978-0-300-14198-6 £16.99*Mozart’s Third BrainGöran SonneviTranslation, Preface and Notesby Rika LesserForeword Rosanna WarrenWinner of the 2006 NordicCouncil’s Literature Prize,Swedish writer Göran Sonnevi isundoubtedly one of the mostimportant poets working today.In Mozart’s Third Brain, histhirteenth book of verse, heattempts ‘a commentary on everything’—politics, currentevents, mathematics, love, ethics, music, philosophy, nature.Through the impeccable skill of award-winning translatorRika Lesser, Sonnevi’s long-form poem comes to life in Englishwith the full force of its loose, fractured and radiating intensity.A poetic tour de force that darts about dynamically andimaginatively, Mozart’s Third Brain weaves an elaborate webof associations as the poet integrates his private consciousnesswith the world around him. Through Lesser’s translation andpreface, and an enlightening foreword by Rosanna Warren,English readers will finally gain access to this masterpiece.Born in 1939 in Lund, Sweden, Göran Sonnevi is the authorof fifteen books of poems and a volume of poetry intranslation. Rika Lesser is the author of four books of poemsand six books of poetry in translation.The Margellos World Republic of LettersNovember 240 pp. 197x152mm.ISBN 978-0-300-14580-9 £20.00*Translation rights: held by the author