Curriculum vitae2007

"Part novel and part memoir, Yoel Hoffmann's Curriculum Vitae (a bestseller in Israel) is the remarkable summation of the writer's life: his early years in Palestine; school days and adolescence; two marriages; fatherhood; his immersion in Japanese Buddhism; his travels; his writing and his ever-surprising inner life. Curriculum Vitae evolves from its quiet opening into an increasingly hypnotic and astonishing meditation on growth and mortality. Funny and utterly unique, Curriculum Vitae looks backward and inward even as its hero is propelled into the future: How stupid we are to let the world toss us from one place to another, while we need to speak to dentists and poets like warehouse clerks who keep an account of old equipment (bags here and belts there) and pile it up on the.floor. What do we remember? The lake at Biwa and the houses across it. The cherry blossoms and Auschwitz, Treblinka, Maidenak"--Jacket.