In Imagined Cities, Robert Alter traces the arc of literary development triggered by the runaway growth of urban centers from the early nineteenth century through the first two decades of the twentieth. As new technologies and arrangements of public and private space changed the ways people experienced time and space, the urban panorama became less coherent-a metropolis defying traditional representation and definition, a vast jumble of shifting fragments and glimpses-and w...

"A masterpiece of contemporary Bible translation and commentary."—Los Angeles Times Book Review, Best Books of 1999Acclaimed for its masterful new translation and insightful commentary, The David Story is a fresh, vivid rendition of one of the great works in Western literature. Robert Alter's brilliant translation gives us David, the beautiful, musical hero who slays Goliath and, through his struggles with Saul, advances to the kingship of Israel. But this David i...

The swamp had no name and no landmarks: just cypress, Spanish moss, and alligators -- and a wrecked plane with eighty thousand dollars inside it. The man who found the Money Plane could have any woman he wanted -- even the deliriously carnal Dorry Mears -- as long as he kept the source of his fortune a secret. But in the swamp no secret was ever safe. And neither was anyone who had Dorry for a mistress.

Cheops' daughter, the story goes, earned the money for her pyramid by practicing what was even then the Oldest Profession. Her price had been one stone per man. She built a pretty big pyramid.Many centuries later, beautiful Greta Brandt also made some fancy burial plans -- but they were for her husband Farley, who wasn't dead yet. And until he was, Greta intended to leave no stone unturned.Then she met Dave Ferris, a young an not-too-scrupulous archaeologist, who could be b...

In this influential novella, regarded as one of Balzac’s greatest works, a dissolute aristocrat competes with a shadowy rival for the love of an enigmatic golden-eyed woman—a crazed and annihilating conflict that plays out in the most darkly decadent corners of Parisian high society.A handsome, brilliant, consummate hedonist, Henri de Marsay believes in neither man nor woman, neither God nor the devil. He believes in Paris, a city of decadence and sin, a city where...

What if there are other timelines, other histories, other Jews? Would they still have a covenant with the one God, or would they know strange gods? Would they have survived banishment, pogrom and Holocaust? What if the Holocaust had not occurred? Or what if it had succeeded beyond Hitler's darkest dreams?Some of the world's greatest speculative fiction authors explore these roads not taken, and many others, in Other Covenants: Alternate Histories of the Jewish People, the first-eve...

From a renowned literary scholar, the definitive guide to the poetry of the Hebrew Bible"Intelligent, precise and exciting" (Peter Levi, The New York Times Book Review)Renowned literary expert Robert Alter's translation of the Hebrew Bible has electrified readers worldwide. In his classic The Art of Biblical Poetry, Alter radically expands the horizons of biblical scholarship by recasting the Bible as not only a human crea...

A landmark event: the complete Hebrew Bible in the award-winning translation that delivers the stunning literary power of the original. A masterpiece of deep learning and fine sensibility, Robert Alter's translation of the Hebrew Bible, now complete, reanimates one of the formative works of our culture. Capturing its brilliantly compact poetry and finely wrought, purposeful prose, Alter renews the Old Testament as a source of literary power and spiritual inspiration. From the family fricti...

In this radical approach to the Bible, an acclaimed Hebrew scholar and translator looks at the Old Testament with a fresh perspective.With a fundamental return to its narrative prose, Robert Alter translates this section of the Bible through the eyes of a literary critic. He considers the Bible as literary text, guiding readers to approach scripture in a profoundly thoughtful way, proving himself to be a timeless poet in his field.

An intimate portrait illuminating the life and work of Amos Oz, the award-winning Israeli writer and activistAmos Oz (1939–2018) was one of Israel’s most prolific and prominent writers, as well as a regular contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was the author of dozens of novels, essay collections, and novellas written between 1965 and shortly before his death.In this first published biography of Oz, the celebrated translator, literary critic, an...

Three decades ago, renowned literary expert Robert Alter radically expanded the horizons of biblical scholarship by recasting the Bible as not only a human creation but a work of literary art deserving studied criticism. In The Art of Biblical Poetry, his companion to the seminal The Art of Biblical Narrative, Alter takes his analysis beyond narrative craft to investigate the use of Hebrew poetry in the Bible. Updated with a new preface, myriad revisions, and passages f...

The Invention of Dialogue in the Bible is an examination of the Bible's use of dialogue, a feature of literary writing often seen in prose, drama, and verse. Perhaps best known for its use in novels, it reflects characters' temperaments, social and educational backgrounds, their psychology, and their relationships with their interlocutors—and its use is rarely acknowledged within the narratives of the Bible.Comparing a wide range of dialogue specimens in the Hebrew Bible w...