Prof. Yehouda Shenhav, An Arabic novel by Elias Khoury

Yehouda Shenhav intends to translate a new novel by Elias Khoury, which has not yet been published in Arabic. The author promised Yehouda Shenhav (who has already translated three novels by Khoury) that he would send him a draft of the manuscript by the beginning of October. The plan is to work on the Hebrew translation and try to publish it simultaneously with its publication in Arabic. The novel is the second book in a trilogy, of which Bab-AlShams (Gate of the Sun) was the first. Yehouda Shenhav holds the rights to translate all of Khoury's novels, and, in due time, he will make a formal agreement with Khoury's agent in NYC, Mr.  Thomas Colchie.

While this is the plan, there are always uncertainties (e.g., if Khoury does not finish the novel). Therefore we have a backup plan to translate Ali Bader's The Tobacco Keeper, (علي بدر، حارس التبغ، العراق، 2007).‎

Ali Bader, an award-winning Iraqi writer, has already published 11 novels, which became bestsellers in the Arab world. Unfortunately, none of them has been translated into Hebrew. His novel "The tobacco keeper" was a finalist for the Arabic Booker Prize, it was translated into English, receiving rave reviews. The plot takes place in a devastated Iraq, and describes the realities of life in the country after the US invasion and the toppling of Saddam Hussein. The protagonist is a Baghdadi Jew who rose to prominence as a violinist, immigrated to Israel in the early '50s, and returns to Baghdad. The novel spans several decades, beginning in Baghdad in the 1920s, and evolves into the 1950s in Iraq and in Israel. The novel is written through the perspective of an Iraqi writer, born in Baghdad. The British Independent newspaper wrote that "The publishing house has done us a great favor by translating the book into English. The book is so rich and unique that towards the end the reader wishes that there were another 300 pages ….".

Yehouda Shenhav (Ph.D Stanford University 1985) is a Professor of Sociology at Tel-Aviv University. He was the head of Advanced Studies at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute (2005-2010), editor of Theory & Criticism (2000-2010), and senior editor for Organization Studies (2004-2010). His main areas of study are: social theory, sociology of knowledge, management and bureaucracies, ethnicity, race and the political sociology of sovereignty. Shenhav also translates Arabic literature from Arabic into Hebrew and English.

His main book in the area of the history of management was Manufacturing Rationality: The Engineering Foundations of the Managerial Revolution (Oxford University Press, 1999).

His main work in the area of nationalism, ethnicity and religion was The Arab Jews: A Postcolonial Reading of Nationalism, Ethnicity and Religion (Stanford University Press, 2006).

His views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have been published in Beyond the Two-State Solution: A Jewish Political Essay (Polity Press, 2012).