Ephraim Kishon

There was a time when an author from Israel wrote Germans' favorite books. From Turn Around, Mrs. Lot! (1961), Noah's Ark Tourist Class (1963) to Pardon, We Won! (1968), On the Matter of Cain and Abel (1976), and finally the famous family stories with "the best wife of all" and the three children Rafi, Renana, and Amir: Since the 1960s, Ephraim Kishon's books repeatedly topped bestseller lists, dominated bookshelves, and were adapted for television. "Do you love Kishon?" a TV series asked in 1976. Yes, millions of German-speaking readers replied, making the Israeli author one of the country's most successful writers. How did it happen that the Israeli Ephraim Kishon, originally from Budapest, achieved his greatest success with his humorous stories precisely among the German audience? How did Kishon, a Holocaust survivor, become a star author in the Federal Republic of Germany? For him, the Germans' enthusiasm for his satires was a vindication—and an irony of history. German readers, it was said, had "laughed themselves free" of their historical guilt through Kishon's stories. And: Kishon's humor had reconciled Germans and Jews. Really? Beyond these popular interpretations, this book explores the author's international success and shows how, as "Kishon for Germans," he became a symbol of bestseller culture while simultaneously being reduced to the image of a "humor factory." The book thus brings Kishon's many careers together for the first time: For while this "German" Kishon was known for humor and lightheartedness, the "Israeli" Kishon provoked as a political analyst in the Israeli public. After the Six-Day War in 1967, the humorist Kishon did not remain apolitical even before his German audience—and repeatedly alienated the West German feuilleton with his interventions on Israel. Thus, the biography of Kishon's success is not only an early example of a German approach to Israeli politics and literature, which remains at the center of debates about antisemitism, Israel criticism, cultural bureaucracy, and BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) initiatives to this day. Based on Kishon's autobiographical accounts, the recollections of contemporaries and companions, as well as press articles and numerous unpublished archival sources, the book tells Kishon's success story in the field of tension between literature, humor, and politics, tracing the author's literary path from communist post-war Hungary, through the early years of the State of Israel, to the "old" Federal Republic and even the GDR. The narrative avoids the constraints of biographical chronology, instead treating in 15 scenic chapters the fundamental questions around which Kishon's life revolved: his relationship to his origins and his role as a stranger, the connections between humorous literature and politics, the role of success, public recognition, and private happiness.

Manufacturer / Responsible Person:
Langen Müller Verlag GmbH, Thomas-Wimmer-Ring 11, 80539, Munich, Germany, info@langenmueller.de