Do not expect me to reveal all sorts of creative secrets, or to work alchemy, or take you on a guided tour of the kitchen, or whatever. On the contrary. My aim here is to express some very simple thoughts about one or two things to do with contemporary Israeli writing.

On the threshold

You've guessed: having said ‘contemporary Israeli’ I am actually going to lead off with totally other places and times. I believe the greatest creations in world literature have almost always been achieved in twilight periods. This is a rather curious phenomenon, that may be out of line with every social or national ideology. All ideologies like to boast that the arts flourish under their aegis. No ideology can be pleased to acknowledge that it is its decline and fall that favours the growth of literature. It is nevertheless true that, in the lives of nations, faiths and cultures, periods of flourishing success, of dynamic creativity, periods when things are getting bigger and stronger, are not propitious to storytellers. (They themselves may well be drawn into such an embrace, but their stories will wend their way to other times and places.) The greatest creations in world literature have generally been produced in the twilight, or in relation to a period of twilight, when a centuries-old civilisation has passed its zenith and is on the decline, whether under external pressure or under its own weight when an ageing culture is beginning to smell of decay.

The authors of some of the best works of world literature are people who have had divided minds in their own time.