Curt Leviant (born 1932,

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

Harry Zohn, ''Österreichische Juden in der Literatur'' (Olamenu, 1969), p. 37.) is a retired Jewish Studies professor, as well as a novelist and translator.

Personal life and career

His parents were Jacques and Fenia Leviant. They spoke Yiddish at home, and encouraged their son's interest in Yiddish literature and theater. He came to the United States in 1938. He took a BA from CUNY (Brooklyn), followed in 1957 by an MA from

Columbia Columbia may refer to: * Columbia (personification), the historical female national personification of the United States, and a poetic name for America Places North America Natural features * Columbia Plateau, a geologic and geographic region in ...

, with a thesis on Lamed Shapiro. From 1960, he taught Hebraic studies at

Rutgers Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's College, and w ...

, taking a PhD there in 1966 with a doctoral thesis that was a translation with commentary, published in 1969 as ''King Artur: A Hebrew Authurian Romance of 1279''. He married Erika Leah Pfeifer, they had three daughters, Dalya, Dvora, Shulamit. Leviant was also a book reviewer, usually of Jewish authors, with reviews appearing in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', ''

The Nation ''The Nation'' is an American liberal biweekly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's ''The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper tha ...

'', and other publications, especially Jewish media. In more recent years, he has been, co-authoring with his wife, a Jewish travel writer. According to Lewis Fried, "his fiction is nuanced, surprising, and often arabesque, dealing with the demands of the present and the claims of the past.""Leviant, Curt" entry in ''Encyclopaedia Judaica'', 2nd edition, 2007, v. 12, p. 696.

Novels

*''The Yemenite Girl''. Bobbs-Merrill, 1977; Avon/Bard Books, 1978; Syracuse University Press, 1999 ** expansion of a 1973 short story of the same title, published in ''The Literary Review'', Fall 1973. ** winner of the

Edward Lewis Wallant Award In 1962, the Edward Lewis Wallant Award was established at the University of Hartford, in Connecticut, USA by Fran and Irving Waltman. It is presented annually to a writer whose fiction is considered to have significance for American Jews. The award ...

*''Passion in the Desert'' Avon/Bard Books, 1980 *''The Man Who Thought He Was Messiah''. Jewish Publication Society, 1990 *''Partita in Venice''. Livingston Press, 1999 *''Diary of an Adulterous Woman: A Novel: Including an ABC Dictionary That Offers Alphabetical Tidbits and Surprises''. Syracuse University Press, 2001 *''A Novel of Kalss''. Livingston, 2008 *''Katz or Cats, or How Jesus Became my Rival in Love''. Dzanc Books, 2018

Shorter fiction

*''Ladies and Gentlemen, the Original Music of the Hebrew Alphabet'' and ''Weekend in Mustara: Two Novellas''. University of Wisconsin Press, 2002 *''Zix Zexy Ztories''. Texas Tech University Press, 2012

Translations

Leviant has translated from

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

and Yiddish to English, including: *''

The Yeshiva ''The Yeshiva'' is an English translation by Curt Leviant of the Yiddish novel ''Tsemakh Atlas'' (צמח אטלס) by Chaim Grade. It was published in two volumes in Yiddish and also in translation. It was also published in a Hebrew translati ...

'', by Chaim Grade. *''

The Agunah ''The Agunah'' is a 1974 English translation by Curt Leviant of the 1961 Yiddish novel ''Di Agune'' (די עגונה) by Chaim Grade. It was also published in a 1962 Hebrew translation, ''Ha-Agunah'' (העגונה). The novel is set in the Jew ...

'', by Chaim Grade. *''More Stories from my Father's Court'', by

Isaac Bashevis Singer Isaac Bashevis Singer ( yi, יצחק באַשעװיס זינגער; November 11, 1903 – July 24, 1991) was a Polish-born American Jewish writer who wrote and published first in Yiddish and later translated himself into English with the help ...

. *''Stories and Satires'', by

Sholom Aleichem Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich (Соломон Наумович Рабинович), better known under his pen name Sholem Aleichem (Yiddish and he, שלום עליכם, also spelled in Soviet Yiddish, ; Russian and uk, Шо́лом-Але́й ...

. *''Old Country Tales'', by Sholom Aleichem. *''From the Fair'', by Sholom Aleichem. *''The Jewish Government and Other Stories'', by Lamed Shapiro. *''The Heart-stirring Sermon and other Stories'', by Abraham Reisen. *''The Golem and the Wondrous Deeds of the Maharal of Prague'', by Yudl Rosenberg (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007).

References

External links

Review: Curt Leviant's witty 'A Novel of Klass'

Orlando Sentinel The ''Orlando Sentinel'' is the primary newspaper of Orlando, Florida, and the Central Florida region. It was founded in 1876 and is currently owned by Tribune Publishing Company. The ''Orlando Sentinel'' is owned by parent company, '' Tribune P ...

, December 7, 2008. Accessed 2011-03-01.
Leviant on Chaim Grade
''Jewish Action''
Leviant on Chaim Grade
''Jewish Review of Books''
"Se l'amore fa dimenticare persino l'aleph bet", Sette - October 4th 2013
Leviant interview with an Italian newspaper. He implies an age that would have meant he wrote his master's thesis at age 13 and was on the Rutgers faculty at age 16. {{DEFAULTSORT:Leviant, Curt 1932 births American people of Austrian-Jewish descent American translators Jewish emigrants from Austria to the United States after the Anschluss Austrian Jews Austrian translators Living people Translators from Yiddish Yiddish–English translators