“Literature is my homeland”
A conversation on living, reading and writing in Israel and elsewhere
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
The writer Alexander Illichevsky was born in Baku and grew up near Moscow, before moving to the US and returning to Russia. He has lived in Israel since 2013. During the day, he speaks Hebrew; in the evening, he writes in Russian. His books are published in Russia, and some are available in translation in Germany and France, such as the encyclopaedic contemporary novel “Der Perser” (“The Persian”). His work has not been translated into Hebrew, and only a few people read his books in Israel. It was a light-hearted attitude to life and a poem by Brodsky that turned the former physicist into a writer. Today, he earns his living as a radiologist. Another square root will have to appear in the sky before he switches to Hebrew.
(Osteuropa 9-11/2019, pp. 167–171)