Yoram Rosner

 

Born in Israel (1961), Yoram Rosner practiced electrical engineering until discovering that he was more interested in people than electrons. He turned his professional life around, running a well-known user experience design agency while writing novellas and novels. Weltmeister is his first published work.

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Title: Weltmeister

Novel

Publisher: Kinneret, Zmorah-Bitan, Dvir

Year: 2023

382 pp.

 

Translation rights: World

Translations: Partial English translation in progress

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Climate change sparks a catastrophic heat wave in Israel, fostering political and social unrest in numerous cut-off towns. 

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Fires engulf the small town where young professor Dan Gidron lives with his wife, Eleanor. Dan is a stern man of few words, the son of a war hero (or, as some would say, war criminal), and Eleanor is a sharp-witted TV personality.  Trapped with them in the same house is Dan’s assistant, a gentle young man who is hopelessly in love with Eleanor.

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As flames approach the town’s houses, the terrified residents split into two camps: those who demand to be evacuated and those who are determined to stay. Dan hopes to unite everyone under his leadership but is challenged by a charismatic and violent resident. This thug humiliates him in public and takes over the town with the aggression, divisiveness, and incitement that only utter chaos can cause.

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Dan’s facade of masculinity cracks when confronted with this blatant cruelty, while his indecisive assistant gets the chance to be a hero in his own right.

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Critical Praise

 

In his debut novel, Yoram Rosner succeeds in describing the protagonists' sense of helplessness, the collapse of the social order, the point when the intense heat outside starts to seep in - and leads to a complete fusion between reality and delusion. And as the temperatures rise, the writing itself becomes wild, sometimes grotesque... Through these three representations of masculinity raise a discussion on the question of "toxic masculinity" and the toll it takes, both on the environment and on the men themselves... This is a mature and powerful book, which combines concrete descriptions with episodes of stream of consciousness and a unique use of language. The intense emotional impression it leaves, and the dilemmas it raises, are expected to accompany the readers for a long time.

Eyal Hayut-Mann, Israel Hayom

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Rosner's novel is on fire, and the reader, mesmerized by the fire, unwittingly gets closer to it with every page he turns in this exciting book.

From the back cover: Oded Volkstein

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Like a self-fulfilling prophecy, Yoram Rosner describes in an original and surprising new novel how a calm situation transforms in an instant and burns everything, and how out of a heated climate arise tyrannical leaders... The climate change is present in the book. Everyone sweats all the time, and the air conditioners and fans don't always help. In such an extreme situation, extreme phenomena also develop...Another central theme in Rosner's novel is masculinity. There are three types of masculinity here: on one end of the scale the bookish student Asaf, out of a job and single; at the other end the emotionally disabled,  serious professor, while the one who breaks the scale is the masculine and violent Stud. Only towards the end of the novel is it possible to understand who the “real” man actually is.

Shiri Lev-Ari, Calcalist

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