The Eve of November 7 - Paperback

by Zeev Fridman (Author), Stefani Hoffman (Translator), Brauner (Editor)

This dichotomy lies at the heart of the novel, The Eve of November 7, in which two realities clash: the utterly false, morally hollow, grotesquely ugly Soviet reality and the world of the protagonist, fighting for his spiritual survival. In this collision, the dramatic events that the author himself experienced are bizarrely refracted. The novel's action takes place in the course of one night and unwinds like a powerful spring, continuously impelling one to follow the story's plot. Love, betrayal, changes of masks, flip-flop images, ghostly guests who care about the future, surreal characters and scenes as well as Kafkaesque psychology-all are imbued with the author's erudite, insightful and lively prose.

Author Biography

Zeev Fridman (1960-2009) grew up in the former Soviet Union and began writing in his teens, but his writings were non-conformist and never submitted for publication. A gifted clarinetist, he graduated from the Rostov-on-Don State Conservatory in 1984. In 1990, he immigrated to Israel, joined the Israel Sinfonietta Orchestra of Beersheva as a clarinetist, and became a successful music teacher. His short stories, poems, and this novel were discovered posthumously in 2009. "In my youth, I was an idealist. I lived in two different worlds: on the one hand, the ideal world, which consisted of serious music, great literature, beautiful art and lofty ideals of the good, love, and brotherhood--and on the other, the real world, which seemed to me, for the most part, intimidating, hostile, gray and oppressive: a world of banners, square faces on posters, long lines, the imposed conformity of ideas, and hopeless despair..." (Zeev Fridman)