Robert Alter

A masterpiece of deep learning and fine sensibility, Robert Alter's translation of the Hebrew Bible, now complete, reanimates one of the formative works of our culture. Capturing its brilliantly compact poetry and finely wrought, purposeful prose, Alter renews the Old Testament as a source of literary power and spiritual inspiration. From the family frictions of Genesis and King David's flawed humanity to the serene wisdom of Psalms and Job's incendiary questioning of God's ways, these magnificent works of world literature resonate with a startling immediacy. Featuring Alter's generous commentary, which quietly alerts readers to the literary and historical dimensions of the text, this is the definitive edition of the Hebrew Bible.

A Translation with Commentary

The Hebrew Bible

A new translation of the first book of the Bible honors meanings and literary strategies of the ancient Hebrew language, while bringing the stories together in a narrative format that makes it read more like a fully integrated book

Genesis

In what is both a radical approach to the Bible, and a fundamental return to its narrative prose, Robert Alter reads the Old Testament with new eyes—the eyes of a literary critic. Alter takes the old yet simple step of reading the Bible as a literary creation.

The Art Of Biblical Narrative

Presents a modern translation of the books of Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament, providing an annotation and commentary for each verse.

The Wisdom Books: Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes: A Translation with Commentary

A landmark event: the complete Hebrew Bible in the award-winning translation that delivers the stunning literary power of the original. A masterpiece of deep learning and fine sensibility, Robert Alter’s translation of the Hebrew Bible, now complete, reanimates one of the formative works of our culture. Capturing its brilliantly compact poetry and finely wrought, purposeful prose, Alter renews the Old Testament as a source of literary power and spiritual inspiration. From the family frictions of Genesis and King David’s flawed humanity to the serene wisdom of Psalms and Job’s incendiary questioning of God’s ways, these magnificent works of world literature resonate with a startling immediacy. Featuring Alter’s generous commentary, which quietly alerts readers to the literary and historical dimensions of the text, this is the definitive edition of the Hebrew Bible.

The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary (Vol. Three-Volume Set)

Analyzes the structure, functions, and metaphors of the poetry in Psalms, Job, Proverbs, and other books of the Old Testament

The Art of Biblical Poetry

Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature Robert Alter

אורי אלטר

An exposition of the relationship between tradition an modernity reflected in the writings of three Jewish scholars

Tradition and Modernity in Kafka, Benjamin, and Scholem

Necessary Angels

Frank Kermode

Offers guidance for reading and studying each book of the Old and New Testament.

The Literary Guide to the Bible

"A modern classic....Thrilling and constantly illuminating."—Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book World Through a distinguished career of critical scholarship and translation, Robert Alter has equipped us to read the Hebrew Bible as a powerful, cohesive work of literature. In this landmark work, Alter's masterly translation and probing commentary combine to give contemporary readers the definitive edition of The Five Books. Winner of the PEN Center USA Literary Award for Translation and the Koret Jewish Book Award for Translation, a Newsweek Top 15 Book, Los Angeles Times Favorite Book, and San Francisco Chronicle Best Book.

The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary

A distinguished critic rescues literature from the ivory tower and reestablishes reading as a personal source of complex pleasure and insight.

In an Ideological Age

The Pleasures of Reading

“For many serious readers,” Robert Alter writes in his preface, “the novel still matters, and I have tried here to suggest some reasons why that should be so.” In his wide-ranging discussion, Alter examines the imitation of reality in fiction to find out why mimesis has become problematic yet continues to engage us deeply as readers. Alter explores very different sorts of novels, from the self-conscious artifices of Sterne and Nabokov to what seem to be more realistic texts, such as those of Dickens, Flaubert, John Fowles, and the early Norman Mailer. Attention is also given to such individual critics as Edmund Wilson and Alfred Kazin and to current critical schools. In Alter's essays, a particular book or movement or juxtaposition of writers provides the occasion for the exploration of a general intellectual issue. The scrutiny of well-chosen passages, the joining of images or themes or ideas, the associative and intuitive processes that lead to the right phrase and the right loop of syntax for the matter at hand-all these come together unexpectedly to illuminate both the text in question and the general issue. Recent discussions of mimesis in fiction generally proceed from a single thesis. By contrast, Motives for Fiction offers an empirical approach, attempting to define mimesis in its various guises by careful critical readings of a heterogeneous sampling of literary texts. Intelligent and good-humored, the book is also old-fashioned enough to wonder whether mimesis might not be a task or responsibility to which much contemporary fiction has not proved entirely adequate.

Motives for Fiction

Chronicles the ancient history of Israel and its prophets, from Samson to Elijah.

Ancient Israel: The Former Prophets: Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings: A Translation with Commentary

Discusses the implications involved in studying the Bible as a literary text, comments on the new wave of literary biblical studies, and reexamines the verses that have dictated an entire culture

The World Of Biblical Literature

Examines the way that the King James version of the Bible--especially the Old Testament--has influenced literary style in the works of Melville, Hemingway, Faulkner, Bellow, Marilynne Robinson, and Cormac McCarthy.

American Prose and the King James Bible

Pen of Iron

From the recipient of the National Jewish Book Award for Lifetime Achievement, a "hugely entertaining and irreverent" (Adam Gopnik, New Yorker) account of the art of translating the Hebrew Bible into English In this brief book, award-winning biblical translator Robert Alter offers a personal and passionate account of what he learned about the art of Bible translation during the two decades he spent completing his own English version of the Hebrew Bible. Showing why the Bible and its meaning can be brought to life in English only by re-creating the subtle and powerful literary style of the original text, Alter discusses the principal aspects of biblical Hebrew that any translator should try to reproduce: word choice, syntax, word play and sound play, rhythm, and dialogue. In the process, he provides an illuminating and accessible introduction to biblical style that also offers insights about the art of translation far beyond the Bible.

The Art of Bible Translation

From award-winning literary scholar Robert Alter, a masterful exploration of how Nabokov used artifice to evoke the dilemmas, pain, and exaltation of the human condition Admirers and detractors of Vladimir Nabokov have viewed him as an ingenious contriver of literary games, teasing and even outsmarting his readers through his self-reflexive artifice and the many codes and puzzles he devises in his fiction. Nabokov himself spoke a number of times about reality as a term that always has to be put in scare quotes. Consequently, many critics and readers have thought of him as a writer uninterested in the world outside literature. Robert Alter shows how Nabokov was passionately concerned with the real world and its complexities, from love and loss to exile, freedom, and the impact of contemporary politics on our lives. In these illuminating and exquisitely written essays, Alter spans the breadth of Nabokov's writings, from his memoir, lectures, and short stories to major novels such as Lolita. He demonstrates how the self-reflexivity of Nabokov's fiction becomes a vehicle for expressing very real concerns. What emerges is a portrait of a brilliant stylist who is at once serious and playful, who cared deeply about human relationships and the burden of loss, and who was acutely sensitive to the ways political ideologies can distort human values. Offering timeless insights into literature’s most fabulous artificer, Nabokov and the Real World makes an elegant and compelling case for Nabokov's relevance today.

Between Appreciation and Defense

Nabokov and the Real World

"Mendele Mocher Sforim. Shem and Japheth on the train.--Peretz, Y. L. Scenes from Limbo.--Feierberg, M. Z. In the evening.--Ahad Ha-Am. Imitation and assimilation.--Bialik, H. N. The short Friday. Revealment and concealment in language.--Brenner, Y. H. The way out.--Barash, A. At heaven's gate.--Agnon, S. Y. Agunot. The lady and the peddler. At the outset of the day. Forevermore.--Hazaz, H. Rahamim. The sermon.--Yizhar, S. The prisoner.--Amichai, Y. The times my father died.--Oz, A. Before his time.--Yehoshua, A. B. Facing the forests."

Modern Hebrew Literature

Three decades ago, renowned literary expert Robert Alter radically expanded the horizons of biblical scholarship by recasting the Bible as not only a human creation but a work of literary art deserving studied criticism. In The Art of Biblical Poetry, his companion to the seminal The Art of Biblical Narrative, Alter takes his analysis beyond narrative craft to investigate the use of Hebrew poetry in the Bible. Updated with a new preface, myriad revisions, and passages from Alter's own critically acclaimed biblical translations, The Art of Biblical Poetry is an indispensable tool for understanding the Bible and its poetry.

"[Here is] ?the ?Genesis for our generation and beyond."—Robert Fagles Genesis begins with the making of heaven and earth and all life, and ends with the image of a mummy—Joseph's—in a coffin. In between come many of the primal stories in Western culture: Adam and Eve's expulsion from the garden of Eden, Cain's murder of Abel, Noah and the Flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham's binding of Isaac, the covenant of God and Abraham, Isaac's blessing of Jacob in place of Esau, the saga of Joseph and his brothers. In Robert Alter's brilliant translation, these stories cohere in a powerful narrative of the tortuous relations between fathers and sons, husbands and wives, eldest and younger brothers, God and his chosen people, the people of Israel and their neighbors. Alter's translation honors the meanings and literary strategies of the ancient Hebrew and conveys them in fluent English prose. It recovers a Genesis with the continuity of theme and motif of a wholly conceived and fully realized book. His insightful, fully informed commentary illuminates the book in all its dimensions.

Robert Alter

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