SOURCE: “Magic Realism in the Israeli Novel,” in Prooftexts, John Hopkins University Press, Vol. 16, No. 2, May, 1996, pp. 151-68.

In the following essay, Alter provides an overview of Israeli novels containing elements of magic realism.

Until the publication in 1986 of David Grossman's spectacular second novel, See Under: Love, the very conjunction of magic realism and the Israeli novel would have seemed like a contradiction in terms. Since then, the face of Israeli fiction has assumed new, at times surprisingly antic, features, and there have been abundant and exuberant transgressions of the conventions of realism of varying kinds. But it is important to keep in mind that any manifestation of fantasy in Hebrew fiction has to be made against the heavy weight of a dominant tradition of intent realism that goes all the way back to Hebrew writing in nineteenth-century Russia.

It is exemplary of the governing impulse of Hebrew...