Synopses & Reviews
Daniel Bloom is the kind of person who ends most social gatherings with an alternately raging and despairing conversation about the state of things. He is a screenwriter, a husband, and a fatherpretty much in that order.
One day Daniel begins a new project, a revenge fantasy that envisions a nameless assassin taking down the bad guysthe corporate chiefs, the political flacks. And quickly, unmistakably, he realizes that his premise for the screenplay is too good: that he really does want these people to die, that his sense of hopeless impotence has reached a stage of spiritual crisis thats no longer just a matter of vapid dinner-party conversation.
Where Daniel goes from thereto Israel and to the hospital, among other destinationsis no mere private odyssey: it is, in its peculiarly and ferociously personal way, the epic journey of our age.
Review
PRAISE FOR
THE TASK OF THIS TRANSLATOR"There should be no uncertainty about the author's explosive originality: a mix of zany wit, reverse-spin writing and enlarged purpose . . . Hasak-Lowy . . . goes beyond social satire to global concern."Richard Eder, The New York Times
"Decadently cerebral and playful . . . marvelously nimble . . . Hasak-Lowy's highly attuned observations make these stories hilarious."Chicago Tribune
About the Author
TODD HASAK-LOWY received his Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of California, Berkeley. He is currently an assistant professor at the University of Florida, where he teaches Hebrew language and literature. He is the author of The Task of This Translator, a collection of stories. This is his first novel. He lives in Gainesville, Florida.