YA'AKOV SHABTAI (1934-1981) was an Israeli novelist, playwright, and translator.  He combined a bleak, realistic outlook with a humor unusual on the Israeli literary landscape, bringing a touch of Yiddish irony and fluency to the archetypically local scene.

Shabtai's most remarkable and permanent work is PAST CONTINUOUS (1977), a portrait of three middle-aged Israeli men whose lives in Tel Aviv over a nine-month period are presented in the context of two events in the "life" of one of them.  The flow of the narrative mixes past and present, thoughts and events, to create a stream of consciousness that moves from one character’s mind to another, often through objects and experiences.  Written as a single paragraph, it was the first novel to be written in vernacular Hebrew.  In its English translation the novel received international acclaim as a unique work of modernism, prompting critic Gabriel Josipovici of The Independent to name it the greatest novel of the decade, comparing it to Proust's "In Search of Lost Time".  In a 2007 survey among 25 top Israeli publishers, editors, and critics, the novel was chosen the best Hebrew book written in Israel since the foundation of the state in 1948.

PAST PERFECT (1984), edited by the author's widow together with the critic Dan Miron and published posthumously, serves as an indirect continuation of Past Continuous in terms of narrative, prose style, and themes.  Here the narrative has been broken down into four parts, and divided further into paragraphs, albeit lengthy ones.  The first part is written in the same stream of consciousness mode as the earlier novel, moving seamlessly between the protagonist's thought and external events.  The later parts of the novel move away from this style, towards a more varied narration, until the very end, when his death and rebirth are described in a lyrical, almost magical-realist style.


The following books are in PDF format:

* Past Continuous (Jewish Publication Society, 1985). Translated by Dalya Bilu.

* Past Perfect (Viking, 1987). Translated by Dalya Bilu.

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