The Wall, Etc. by Hamutal Bar-Yosef,

is a collection of eighteen powerfully written stories, some of which are based on true stories. Israel’s celebrated writer Amos Oz called the collection "especially strong and heartbreaking."

Hamutal Bar-Yosef creates in The Wall, Etc., a tragicomic, sometimes grotesque slice-of-life narrative that portrays the human condition as the yawning abyss between desires and reality. She expresses great empathy and respect for the characters she depicts, and she enters their inner worlds with a breathtaking sensitivity.

Hamutal Bar-Yosef is a well-known Israeli writer, poet, translator, and scholar. She was born in a kibbutz to parents who lost their family in the Holocaust. Her only brother was killed in Israel’s 1948 War of Independence. At age twenty, the author married the playwright Yosef Bar-Yosef and had four children; one committed suicide at sixteen. She provided for her family first as a high school teacher, and then by writing guides for teachers.

The author didn’t write her PhD dissertation until after turning forty, and she became a professor of Hebrew literature at Ben-Gurion University. She has published eight scholarly books and fifteen books of poetry, and she has won numerous distinguished prizes for her poetry. Her collection of stories, The Wall, Etc., (originally titled Music) won the ASI (Association of Israeli Writers) prize.

Professor Bar-Yosef has translated poetry and prose fiction from English, French, and Russian.

An English-language North-American edition was published in early 2019 by Samuel Wachtman's Sons, Inc., CA.184 Pages.

A French-language edition has been scheduled

for publication in summer 2019.