Yaakov Shabtai
Past Continuous.
Philadelphia: The Jewish Publicatin Society of America, 1985. Translation by Dalya Bilu of "Zikhron devarim" (1977). 0827602391 389 pages.
Volume, measuring approximately 6" x 8.75", is bound in gilt-lettered quarter red cloth and dark gray paper-covered boards. Book shows very light shelfwear. Binding is firm. Previous owner's ink stamp appears on front flyleaf. Pages are clean and bright. Dust jacket, with price of $16.95 on front flap, displays light shelfwear.
"A reissue of one of the classic works of twentieth-century Jewish fiction; "Past Continuous" depicts the crises in the lives of three Israeli men - Goldman, Israel, and Caesar - as they attempt to focus their lives and extract meaning from chaos. The reader is drawn into a mass of family tangles and social exhaustion -- wives and ex-wives, passing mistresses and crushing marriages, desperate intrigues and disappointments, the loss of children, friends, ideals. Past Continuous is a brilliant tour de force, a Joycean panorama of the lives of three men, their families, their lovers, and their friends in the quintessentially modern city of Tel Aviv. As much a novel about Tel Aviv - its landscape, its idiosyncratic atmosphere, and its history - as it is about the human condition."