Yoel Hoffmann - Biography

Yoel Hoffmann (born 1937) is a contemporary Jewish author, editor, scholar and translator. He is currently a professor of Japanese poetry, Buddhism, and philosophy at the University of Haifa in Israel and lives in Galilee.

Biography

Born in Romania to Austro-Hungarian Jewish parents, at the age of one Hoffmann and his parents fled a Europe increasingly under Nazi influence for the British Mandate of Palestine. Shortly after the move Hoffmann's mother died, and he was entrusted by his father to an orphanage where he spent his time until his father re-married.

As a young man, Hoffmann left his home in Israel and traveled to Japan, where he spent two years living in a Zen monastery and studying Chinese and Japanese texts with monks. He would later return to Japan to earn his doctorate. Hoffmann did not begin writing fiction until in his forties, and though chronologically a member of the sixties "Generation of the State," his work is oft-described as being on the forefront of avant-garde Hebrew literature.

Hoffmann's first book of fiction, Kätzchen - The Book of Joseph, was published in Hebrew in 1988. He has since gone on to write nine more books in Hebrew, six of which have been translated into English and published by New Directions; these six are Katschen and The Book of Joseph (1998), Bernhard (1998), The Christ of Fish (1999), The Heart is Katmandu (2001), The Shunra and the Schmetterling (2004), and "Curriculum Vitae" (2009). Hoffmann was awarded the first ever Koret Jewish Book Award, as well as the Bialik Prize by the city of Tel Aviv, and the Prime Minister's Prize.

The rights to Hoffmann's latest book, Moods, were sold to Galaade publishing company in France and to Keter Books in Israel in 2010.

Selected bibliography

Writings by the author

• Katschen and The Book of Joseph, trans. from Hebrew by Eddie Levenston, David Kriss, and Alan Treister, New Directions (New York, NY) 1998.
• Bernhard, trans. from Hebrew by Alan Treister & Eddie Levenston, New Directions (New York, NY), 1998.
• The Christ of Fish, trans. from Hebrew by Eddie Levenston, New Directions (New York, NY), 1999.
• The Heart is Katmandu, trans. from Hebrew by Peter Cole, New Directions (New York, NY), 2001.
• The Shunra and the Schmetterling, trans. from Hebrew by Peter Cole, New Directions (New York, NY), 2004.
• Curriculum Vitae, trans. from Hebrew by Peter Cole, New Directions (New York, NY), 2009.
• Moods, Rights sold to: France, Galaade; Israel, Keter Books, 2010.

Editor & Translator

• Japanese Death Poems: Written by Zen Monks and Haiku Poets on the Verge of Death, Tuttle Publishing, 1998.
• The Sound of the One Hand: 281 Zen Koans with Answers, Basic Books, 1975.

Further reading

• Jewish Studies Quarterly, 1, no. 3 (1993/1994), Nili Gold, "Bernhardt's Journey: The Challenges of Yoel Hoffmann's Writing."
• Article from Haaretz newspaper on Yoel Hoffmann and the novel Curriculum Vitae