Award-winning Israeli novelist Aharon Applefeld’s posthumous work, Poland, A Green Land, joins his many publications including the novels The Iron Tracks, Badenheim 1939, and The Story of a Life. The novel centers around Yaakov Fine, a successful dress shop owner who, struggling with a mid-life depression, journeys to his family’s ancestral village and learns about the reality of Jewish life in Poland – past, present, and future. Applefeld mined lived experiences to create fiction of powerful, universal resonance. This discussion between Altie Karper, Applefeld’s longtime editor at Schocken books, and Dr. Philip Hollander, author of From Schlemiel to Sabra: Zionist Masculinity and Palestinian Hebrew Literature, will explore Applefeld’s literary legacy and timeless writing.
Altie Karper is the Editorial Director of Schocken Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC. Authors with whom she has worked include Aharon Applefeld, Robert Gottlieb, Irving Howe, Francine Klagsbrun, Rabbi Harold Kushner, Deborah Lipstadt, Arthur Miller, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Elie Wiesel, and Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg.
Dr. Philip Hollander currently teaches Hebrew language and culture at Princeton University. A scholar of Modern Hebrew literature and culture, he previously taught at Cornell, Tulane, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of From Schlemiel to Sabra: Zionist Masculinity and Palestinian Hebrew Literature and has written numerous articles on American Hebrew literature and Israeli film and literature.
Watch Here: