The Sound of One Hand

“The very strain of koan meditation [found in The Sound of the One Hand] is not unlike the self-imposed strain of a creative mathematician, writer, or artist. Such a person deliberately sets himself difficult problems, and deliberately renews them once they have been solved in order to compose or harmonize or solve himself.” —Ben-Ami Scharfstein “For scholars and students of Zen, inquiring readers, or anyone seeking relief from the rhetoric of division in the current political sphere, The Sound of the One Hand offers helpful didacticisms and poetic reflections that are truly timeless.” —Nozomi Saito, Asymptote“Koans aim for the complete destruction of the rational intellect.” —Carl Jung

Yoel Hoffmann was born in 1937. He received his PhD in the philosophy of religion and Buddhism from Kyoto University, Japan, and went on to teach Eastern philosophy at the University of Haifa. In addition to his works of fiction, he is the author of several books on Zen Buddhism, comparative philosophy, and Japanese poetry. Hoffmann has been awarded the Koret Jewish Book Award, the Newman Prize of Hebrew Literature by Bar-Ilan University, and the Bialik Prize by the city of Tel Aviv. He lives in the Galilee.

Dror Burstein teaches literature at Tel Aviv University. He is the editor of the poetry journal Helikon and the recipient of the 1997 Jerusalem Prize for Literature. His books Kin and Netanya have been translated into English.