Robert Alter's translation of the Hebrew Bible, the magnificent capstone to a lifetime of distinguished scholarly work, has won the PEN Center Literary Award for Translation. His immense achievements in scholarship ranging from the eighteenth-century European novel to contemporary Hebrew and American literature earned Alter the Robert Kirsch Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Los Angeles Times. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, Alter is the Class of 1937 Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley.

"One of the most ambitious literary projects of this or any age." -- Adam Kirsch "Alter's translation can be fairly described as a godsend...Immediately readable, immensely learned, an education and a restitution." -- Seamus Heaney "The poets will rejoice. Alter's language ascends to a rare purity through a plainness that equals the plainness of the Hebrew." -- Cynthia Ozick "Alter takes us back to the essence of the meaning...Everything is clearer, seeming to have been rinsed not in the baptismal waters of the New Testament but in the life-giving water of the desert." -- James Wood "A considerable achievement...Alter holds me to his darkly economical texts." -- Harold Bloom "You think you know these texts, or you do until you read Alter, who reignites their beauty in bracing and unexpected ways." -- Malcolm Jones "Thrilling and constantly illuminating. After the still, small voices of so many tepid modern translations, here is a whirlwind." -- Michael Dirda "Alter has achieved the significant feat of refreshing English by taking it back to one of its sources of strength." -- Peter Ackroyd

Robert Alter's translation of the Hebrew Bible, the magnificent capstone to a lifetime of distinguished scholarly work, has won the PEN Center Literary Award for Translation. His immense achievements in scholarship ranging from the eighteenth-century European novel to contemporary Hebrew and American literature earned Alter the Robert Kirsch Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Los Angeles Times. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, Alter is the Class of 1937 Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley.

"One of the most ambitious literary projects of this or any age." -- Adam Kirsch "Alter's translation can be fairly described as a godsend...Immediately readable, immensely learned, an education and a restitution." -- Seamus Heaney "The poets will rejoice. Alter's language ascends to a rare purity through a plainness that equals the plainness of the Hebrew." -- Cynthia Ozick "Alter takes us back to the essence of the meaning...Everything is clearer, seeming to have been rinsed not in the baptismal waters of the New Testament but in the life-giving water of the desert." -- James Wood "A considerable achievement...Alter holds me to his darkly economical texts." -- Harold Bloom "You think you know these texts, or you do until you read Alter, who reignites their beauty in bracing and unexpected ways." -- Malcolm Jones "Thrilling and constantly illuminating. After the still, small voices of so many tepid modern translations, here is a whirlwind." -- Michael Dirda "Alter has achieved the significant feat of refreshing English by taking it back to one of its sources of strength." -- Peter Ackroyd