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With the publication of his Past Continuous in 1983, Yaakov Shabtai assumed a place of eminence in the canon of modern Jewish literature. Alan Lelchuk, in the New York Times, acclaimed its portrait of contemporary Israeli society as 'the most prodigious (and probably most realistic) in Hebrew fiction.' In Uncle Peretz Takes Off, the first collection of Shabtai's short fiction in English, a magnificent gallery of comic and idiosyncratic characters gives Tel Aviv of the 1940s an unpredictable frontier quality. Written with biting irony and a vivd, atmospheric style, the author portrays a society of individualists and schemers in search of redemption: Uncle Shmuel tries to make his fortune as a poulterer; Uncle Pinke, a born swindler, ends his days as a refugee in Monaco fleeing his creditors; Albert Weiss-Finek dreams of a travelling circus in Palestine, while promising to marry three different women; the uncontrollably ribald Tamara Bell, who poses naked for artists, causes adolescent boys in the neighbourh...