YEHUDA AMICHAI (1924 – 2000) was an internationally acclaimed Israeli poet who was considered by many to be his country's greatest poet and among the leading poets of the 20th century.
Influenced by modern American and English poets, including W.H. Auden, Amichai was noted for his lyrical and accessible language, gentle irony and vivid imagery, often drawn from the Bible and Jewish history. Like many secular Israeli poets, he struggles with religious faith. His poems are full of references to God and the religious experience, and an abiding love of the land. His love poetry is among the most moving in any language in the past two generations -- some exuberant, some powerfully erotic, many suffused with sadness over separation that casts its shadow on love. In a country torn by armed conflict, his poetry poignantly asserts the preciousness of private experience, cherished under the repeated threats of violence and death.
With the publication of AMEN (1977), Amichai garnered a wide audience through the translation of his poems into English by Ted Hughes. His poetry has attracted a variety of gifted English translators on both sides of the Atlantic from the 1960s to the present. Compilations from his many publications include THE SELECTED POETRY OF YEHUDA AMICHAI (1986, updated 2013), translated by Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell, and YEHUDA AMICHAI: A LIFE OF POETRY, 1948-1994 (1994), translated by Benjamin and Barbara Harshav. The most recent compilation, THE POETRY OF YEHUDA AMICHAI (2013), edited by Robert Alter, offers he largest selection of his work to appear in English. gathering the best of the existing translations as well as offering English versions of many previously untranslated poems.
In addition to his poetry, Amichai wrote novels, of which the best known is NOT OF THIS TIME, NOT OF THIS PLACE (1963), about the quest for identity of a Jewish immigrant to Israel, and short stories including THE WORLD IS A ROOM (1984).
Yehuda Amichai's poetry has been translated into 40 languages. He was awarded the 1957 Shlonsky Prize, the 1969 Brenner Prize, the 1976 Bialik Prize, and the 1982 Israel Prize, in addition to many other international honors, and was nominated for the Nobel Prize several times.
This is a thoroughly revised and updated version of an earlier torrent. The following books are in PDF and/or ePub format:
== POETRY ==
* A Life of Poetry, 1948-1994 [tr. Harshav] (HarperCollins, 1994) – PDF * Amen [tr. Amichai & Hughes] (Harper & Row, 1977) – PDF * Early Books [tr. Schimmel & Gutmann] (Sheep Meadow, 1988) – PDF * Even a Fist Was Once an Open Palm with Fingers [tr. Harshav] (HarperPerennial, 1991) – PDF * Great Tranquillity [tr. Abramson & Parfitt] (Sheep Meadow, 1998) – PDF * Love Poems: A Bilingual Edition (Harper & Row, 1981) – PDF * Open Closed Open [tr. Bloch & Kronfeld] (Harcourt, 2000) – ePub * Poems [tr. Gutmann] (Harper & Row, 1968) – PDF * Poems of Jerusalem [Bilingual Edition] (Harper & Row, 1988) – PDF * Poetry of Yehuda Amichai [ed. Alter] (FSG, 2015) – ePub * Selected Poetry [tr. Bloch & Mitchell] (California, 2013) – ePub + PDF * Songs of Jerusalem & Myself [tr. Schimmel] (Harper & Row, 1973) – PDF * Travels: A Bilingual Edition [tr. Nevo] (Sheep Meadow, 1986) – PDF
== PROSE ==
* Not of This Time, Not of This Place [tr. Katz] (Vallentine Mitchell, 1973) – PDF * The World is a Room & Other Stories [tr. Grumet et al.] (JPS, 1984) – PDF
