Curt Leviant – författare

Filled with Curt Leviant's signature blend of humor and drama, these two enchanting and original novellas lure readers into a dazzling storybook world."Ladies and Gentlemen, the Original Music of the Hebrew Alphabet" is set in Budapest during the Communist era. The story focuses on the tenuous seesaw between Dr. Isaac Gantz, a musicologist, and engineer Ferdinand Friedman, a Holocaust survivor who believes that he possesses one of the greatest manuscripts of the ages, a Rosetta Stone of Judaica. Friedman is willing to share it—but there is a "but." In pursuing this prize, Gantz enters a world of strange human relationships filled with doubts and surprises. A vibrant cast of characters adds dimension to this gripping story in which Jewish folklore, music, and history coalesce."Weekend in Mustara" unfolds on the fictional island of Mustara in southern Europe, a mountainous, totalitarian country that tolerates Judaism. Its few Jews cling to their heritage, embodied in their beautiful but sparsely attended synagogue and their museum, where a great memorial book is inscribed with the names of all Mustara Jews martyred during World War II. A scholar of medieval Hebrew manuscripts comes to the island, searching for traces of Yehuda Halevi, the great Hebrew poet of the Spanish Golden Age. He is soon enmeshed among elusive personalities and tangled loyalties, but only when he finds himself displaced in time—in a kind of theater of the absurd—are the purposes of his journey finally realized.

Expertly translated from the Yiddish by award-winning author and translator Curt Leviant, this edition features the fables printed in both English and Yiddish.

An English translation of one of the most fascinating works in medieval Hebrew letters. A rarity, this refurbished Hebrew translation of an Arthurian romance is the only known text of its kind in existence. Based on the writings of an anonymous Italian Jew in 1279, the author presents two stories. The first relates Merlin's role in the seductions of Igerna by Pendragon and the consequent birth of Arthur. The second tells of Arthur's rise to royal glory, of Lancelot's affair with Guinevere, his meeting with the maid of Askalot and his skill at a jousting tournament. This romance exists in a unique copy at the Vatican Library, which Curt Leviant personally examined. He offers a readable version of that text in corrected Hebrew with English transliteration on facing pages and an analysis of Jewish aspects of the piece. He also traces its origins to an old French tale.

Award-winning author Curt Leviant delivers a joyful reimagining of the classic tale of Don Quixote through the eyes of his long-overlooked sidekick, Sancho PanzaIn a dusty old second-hand bookshop in a side street in Sevilla, an unnamed narrator discovers a 1751 edition of Don Quixote—one that is narrated, most unusually, by Sancho Panza. With Curt Leviant’s signature whimsy, this audaciously titled novel reimagines Cervantes’s classic tale through Sancho's eyes, as he and the Don revisit the sites of their former adventures, embark on new ones, and finally go their separate ways when Sancho sets out to write an epic tale of his own, accompanied by a playfully-out-of-place hero from Arthurian romances, Sir Gawain.Rich with literary history and yet utterly original, My Adventures With, and Without, the Knight of the Mournful Countenance, His Grace, Don Quixote, as told by Sancho Panza, Ex-Squire is a reader’s romp from the first page.

With the lyrical joy and lighthearted wordplay that have won him critical acclaim, celebrated Jewish author Curt Leviant delivers a charming literary love story against the backdrop of the lush Italian countrysideSuccessful author Giorgio is vacationing in Parma when he meets Sofia, a beautiful woman who bears a striking resemblance to the famous Italian actress Sophia Loren. Giorgio is ecstatic when the lookalike asks for his email, expressing her desire to stay in touch and discuss a problem of hers. To his disappointment, their communication consists not of their own budding romance, but of the details of Sofia’s extramarital love affair, a drama that plays out with characters Giorgio has never met. Sofia consults the author in writing an ending to her story—and as authors do, Giorgio rewrites it, desperate to find a place for himself in it. In this enticing email romanza, Leviant delivers a breathless confessional with two beginnings and two endings, leaving it up to the reader to decipher what’s real.