The David Story: A Translation with Commentary of 1 and 2 Samuel

The David Story: A Translation with Commentary of 1 and 2 Samuel by Robert Alter

A chilling account of political intrigue, illicit sex, murder, war, and human frailty that could only have come from the Bible. The story of David is the greatest single narrative representation in antiquity of a human life evolving by slow stages through time, shaped by the pressures of political life and family, the impulses of body and spirit, and the eventual sad decay of the flesh. In its main character, it provides the first full-length portrait of a Machiavellian prince in Western literature. The beautiful, musical David, resourceful slayer of Goliath, loved by all, reveals himself as a calculating political animal. To advance his own cause, he becomes a collaborator with the archenemies of Israel, the Philistines. Later he commits adultery with Bathsheba, and compounds the betrayal with murder. He exposes himself repeatedly to humiliation, oscillates between noble sentiment and harsh vindictiveness, and with his dying breath charges his son Solomon to wreak bloody vengeance on his enemies. Historical personage and full-blooded imagining, David is the creation of a literary artist comparable to the Shakespeare of the history plays. Robert Alter's brilliant translation and commentary enable a great work of literature to emerge from the Bible and stand on its own.

Robert Alter's translation of the Hebrew Bible, the magnificent capstone to a lifetime of distinguished scholarly work, has won the PEN Center Literary Award for Translation. His immense achievements in scholarship ranging from the eighteenth-century European novel to contemporary Hebrew and American literature earned Alter the Robert Kirsch Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Los Angeles Times. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, Alter is the Class of 1937 Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780393048032
ISBN 10	0393048039
Title	The David Story: A Translation with Commentary of 1 and 2 Samuel
Author	Robert Alter
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	WW Norton & Co
Year published	1999-09-17
Number of pages	448
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable