Praise for Alex Epstein
Blue Has No South
The short texts of Alex Epstein virtuously echo the great tradition of world literature in a truly original manner, as the tension between the classical and the intuitively improvised creates in the reader’s mind the literary equivalent of a cross between Mozart and Miles Davis.
—Etgar Keret
Israel’s new Borges... a master of flash-fiction who distills stories to their aphoristic essence.
—Adam Rovner, Jewish Daily Forward
A rising star in Israeli literature.
—Eric Herschthal, the Jewish Week
Epstein has a singular voice. The moment that he decided to write prose was a blessed moment for the Hebrew literature of our times.
An original writer of exceptional talent... He can be placed next to Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Kafka, Borges.
[Epstein scrutinizes] the space and soul of the city… These stories are the stories of a flaneur—someone who collects discards from the sidewalks, tiny dramas that no one wants any more, and tries to breathe life into their dead merchandise by means of the story. … What most returns to life in these stories in Blue Has No South… is fracturing light from the far-off scenes in the old books, which it sometimes seems that Israeli literature has left on a bench on a boulevard, like items nobody wants. Fortunately for Hebrew literature… writers stroll down this boulevard who pick them up and open them, and then the old sparks fly out of them and again illuminate the space of Hebrew.
—Dror Mishani, Haaretz