Igal Sarna Interview
Igal Sarna discusses his book Petrov Disappears Into the Desert, a work of nonfiction based on a true story about a Russian immigrant’s disappearance and murder in the Israeli desert. Nazareth observes that the book reads like a novel; Sarna, a journalist as well as a fiction writer, says that he researched the story intensively and wrote a factual story in a literary style. They discuss how Sarna’s work questions the mythology of the creation of the state of Israel. Sarna says that, as a journalist, he is constantly surprised by the complexity of Israeli stories. He relates this to the complexity and contradictions of the Israeli state; he says the founding of Israel was essentially a colonial movement, but a movement by Holocaust victims, which in turn, victimized Arabs.
Sarna discusses and reads from his novel, The Memory Hunter. He says the story is about a man looking for salvation by learning about other people’s mysteries; he becomes fascinated by the story of a murder-suicide in a small Israeli village in the 1930. Sarna briefly discusses the award-winning series of newspaper articles that he wrote about the imprisonment of Iranian political refugees in Israel, as well as the biography that he wrote of Israel poet Yonah Valakh.
In: International Writing Program Archive | Fiction
Authors: Igal Sarna
Date Recorded: January 01, 1998
Program: --
Format: interview
Contributors: Peter Nazareth
Topics: Israel; immigration; Bedouins; 1973 Yom Kippur War; colonialism; Holocaust; refugees; Arab-Israeli conflict
Note: Month and Day are unknown.