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The Great Madness, Avigdor Hameiri's first published novel, contained many new literary devices. The novel is considered a documentary novel since it is loosely based on Hameiri's autobiography and based on actual events of the First World War. Hameiri's 1929 novel The Great Madness was the first bestseller published in pre-state Israel. The novel is often compared to Erich Maria Remarque's landmark novel of World War I, All Quiet on the Western Front. Much of the prose literature of World War I was written by men and women who participated in the war and it often takes the form of autobiographical novels (docu-novels). There is only one example of this genre in Hebrew--Hameiri's novels. The work has been translated twice (1952 and 1984), but both editions are dated and out of print. This new translation makes The Great Madness available again and adds to the Hameiri body of literature available in English and translated by Peter Appelbaum.
About the author
Avigdor Hameiri (1890 - 1970) was an Israeli author and Israel's first Poet Laureate. He was born as Emil or Avigdor Feuerstein in 1890, in the village of Odavidhaza (near Munkatsch), Carpathian Ruthenia in Austria Hungary. In 1921, he emigrated to Mandate Palestine, and in 1948, he fought in the War of Independence. Hameiri published the first independent newspaper in Israel and helped to organize the worker's bank. His book, Hannah Senesh is an obligatory reading for all Israeli school children. During World War I, Hameiri fought in in the Austro-Hungarian army and recorded the events in his memoirs, The Great Madness (1929) and Hell on Earth (1932, translated by Appelbaum in 2017). His books have been published in 12 languages. He was also active in founding a theatre movement and several journals in Israel. Hameiri died in Israel on April 3, 1970. His significance as an Austro-Hungarian Jew (and later, Israeli) writing of his wartime experiences is immense in that he is the only Hebrew literary figure to have done and gained recognition for his work.
Peter C. Appelbaum, M.D., Ph.D., is Emeritus Professor of Pathology, Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine. After more than four decades in infectious disease research, Dr. Appelbaum is spending his retirement years writing and translating books on modern-day Jewish military history. He is the author of Loyalty Betrayed and Loyal Sons (Vallentine-Mitchell, 2014) and, together with James Scott, has translated an anthology of war essays and poems by Kurt Tucholsky (Prayer after the Slaughter, Berlinica, 2015) and Broken Carousel: German Jewish Soldier-Poets of the Great War (Stone Tower Books, 2017). He is also the translator/editor of Jewish Tales of the Great War (Stone Tower Books, 2017). Dr. Appelbaum has also translated Of Human Carnage--Odessa 1918-1920 (Black Widow Press and Stone Tower Press, 2020) and Hell on Earth by Avigdor Hameiri into English from the original Hebrew for the first time (Wayne State University Press, fall, 2017). For that work, he was the recipient of the TLS-Risa Domb/Porjes Prize for Hebrew-English Translation for 2019.
