Meir Shalev rereads some of the most commonly known stories of the Bible in a way that strips their heroes and heroines of their sanctity to expose them as flesh and blood characters. Shalev’s reading reveals aspects of these characters’ personality usually repressed or ignored by traditional biblical interpretations.

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Rights Sold:

Italy,  Frassinelli (reverted); France, Gallimard; Holland, Vassallucci; Switzerland, Diogenes;  Israel, Schocken; Russia, Text Publishers

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Reviews:

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“Meir Shalev is writer who loves the reader and has the gift of a candle that illuminates the dim light of ancient texts. His stories are not digressions from the infinite depot of sacred stories but rather samples. Each reader is welcome to add his comments in a margin. The impact of those comments by Meir Shalev is to recapture the original, to reset it, in order to find the verse or sentence destined to open our eyes and discover its soft core that has been preserved for everyone for thousands of years.” – Erri de Luca in Le Monde des Livres

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“With humor but without disrespect, Meir Shalev invites us to discover the Bible in a different way. Irritated by the exegeses of scholars and the euphemisms of godfearing commentators, he wanted to prove that one can read the Bible by calling ’a spate, a spate.'” – Livres Hebdo