Israeli Author's Book to Be Translated Into Farsi

A British-Iranian publishing company is translating a book by Israeli author Etgar Keret into Farsi. Keret says he hopes the translation will "help some of its Iranian readers to see the Israeli people as flawed human entities and not just as mortal enemies," reports The Guardian.

Keret's book, The Seven Good Years, is a memoir of his life in Israel between his son's birth and his father's death.

Keret's translator, the Afghan writer and journalist Aziz Hakimi, told The Guardian that the book's Farsi edition, titled Aan Haft Saal-e Khoob, will be available to the Iranian market via Afghanistan on November 1. The book will be published in London by Nebesht, an imprint of independent on-demand publisher H&S Media, a British-based company founded by Iranian ex-pats that aims to allow readers in Iran access to material banned by the government. H&S Media, which mostly publishes books by Iranian authors, says it approached Keret about publishing a Farsi translation of his book.

Because of the difficulty of receiving money from Iran, a spokesman for H&S Media says it will send an ebook version of the book to anyone in Iran sending them a receipt showing a donation to a charity of their choice. 1,000 printed copies will also be sent for sale in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Hakimi told The Guardian: "I can relate to Etgar's stories at a personal level and that's because they allow me to see for myself how it feels to be an Israeli or a Jew. I've grown up in Iran where there is a lot of propaganda against the Israeli state and a general ban of any sort of literature which challenges the official views on this matter."

In an interview earlier this year, Keret, 48, told Newsweek that he and his wife received many threats after they spoke out against the Gaza war last summer. "People offered to throw my son over Gaza without a parachute, things like that," he said. "But this is basically the price you have to pay if you want to affect the society you're living in."