Seeds in the Desert

Available for the first time in translation, Mendel Mann's stories follow his life in reverse, from Israel in the 1950s to his experiences in the post-War Soviet Union and his childhood in Poland. With psychological insight and a focus on the tension between remembrance and reinvention, Mann provides indelible portraits of survivors as they confront the past and struggle to create a meaningful existence in the fledgling state of Israel.

Available for the first time in translation, Mendel Mann's stories follow his life in reverse, from Israel in the 1950s to his experiences in the post-War Soviet Union and his childhood in Poland. With psychological insight and a focus on the tension between remembrance and reinvention, Mann provides indelible portraits of survivors as they confront the past and struggle to create a meaningful existence in the fledgling state of Israel.

Mendel Mann (1916–1975) was born in Płońsk, Poland. When World War II broke out, Mann was forced to abandon his plan to study art in Warsaw and fled to the Chuvash Soviet Socialist Republic, where he worked as a teacher before enlisting in the Red Army. His War Trilogy, published between 1956 and 1960, evokes his wartime experiences. He returned to Poland after the war only to discover that his whole family had been killed. In 1946 he moved to Regensburg, Germany, with his wife and small son, where he edited a Yiddish daily newspaper. The family emigrated to Israel in 1948, and Mann became editorial secretary of Avrom Sutzkever's influential literary journal Di goldene keyt (The Golden Chain). Mann's final homeland was France: in 1961 he moved to Paris to work for the Yiddish newspaper Undzer vort (Our Word). His literary work flourished there and he returned to his first love, painting, producing watercolors of great delicacy. He died suddenly at age 59. His son Zvi still lives in Israel. Mendel Mann's poetry, novels, and short stories draw on his own turbulent life but also vividly reflect and contemplate the various troubled strands of Jewish life and fate in the twentieth century.