Petty Business
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Syracuse University Press
Published:30th Nov '17
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
As they do every year, Yosef Zinman, a well-to-do Tel Aviv grocer, and his beloved wife Zippi plan a vacation during the holiday of Sukkot to Seefeld in the mountainous Tirols region of Austria. This year, Zippi decides to invite her sister, who has fallen on hard times with a failing perfumery business. Soon, more and more relatives join in on the trip, and the expenses quickly begin to add up. To gather all the funds needed, the family goes into the business of inexpensive clothing and fashion shows for workers’ unions. The summerpromises handsome revenues, but as the Zinman family nears their goal, they become increasingly vexed by their competing interests.
A tragic-comic novel in its essence, Petty Business chronicles a year inone family's life, set against the backdrop of Tel Aviv’s rapidly changing global economy in the early 1990s. Pinkus’s biting critique of Tel Aviv’s provincial character and its residents’ shtetl mentality is delivered with a perfect combination of wit, humor, and tender pathos.
A very funny yet tragic book, a unique work in the history of Israeli literature and one of only a handful ofworks that relates to the great humoristic tradition of Eastern European Jewish literature in Hebrew and Yiddish. Highly recommended.' - Yaron Peleg, Kennedy Leigh Lecturer in Modern Hebrew Studies, University of Cambridge
'The first few episodes of Petty Business bring Honoré de Balzac’s César Birotteau to mind . . . but Pinkus chooses wisely not to show its protagonists in their fall. . . . [It] is not the grand novel about the end of Israeli petit bourgeoisie but a depiction of its last few moments of grace, and it is a wonderful depiction.' - Motti Fogel, Achbar Ha’Ir
'[A] decisive literary victory, a real celebration . . . the precise observations of Philip Roth, the grotesque wildness of Hanoch Levin, and the sharp melancholy of Ephraim Kishon. . . . A humorous novel that is motivated by empathy rather than sarcasm and manages to be both entertaining and deeply moving.' - Omri Herzog, Ha’aretz
'A refreshing, realistic portrayal of the city of Tel Aviv and a rare depiction of middle-aged, petty bourgeois characters who don’t usually findtheir way into Israeli fiction' - Philip Hollander, assistant professor, Center for Jewish Studies, University of Wisconsin–Madison
ISBN: 9780815610915
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 369g
256 pages