Aharon Megged set his novel The Flying Camel And The Golden Hump. First published in Hebrew in 1982 and now available in English from Toby Press, it takes the reader on a part satirical, part historical trip into the world of Hebrew literature dating back to the 19th century.

The protagonist is a young Israeli author with aspirations towards literary greatness. His family had immigrated from Romania and he spent his early years overcoming the stigma of speaking and writing the archaic Hebrew that his father had taught him. In spite of this handicap, Kalman Keren is able to achieve some modest literary success, and stay removed from the snake pit of infighting between factions that have arisen in the Israel's short existence.

In fact when our story opens he is able to keep body and soul together through his writings and the occasional translation of classical French literature into Hebrew, and his confidence level is such that he has begun what he considers to be his magnum opus. However, he has only reached the beginning of page 23 when to his horror he discovers his new upstairs neighbour is none other than Naphtali Schatz, the critic who is every writer's worst nightmare. The one critic of any import who didn't even deign to review Kalman's most recent novel, The Flying Camel And The Golden Hump.

Kalman is immediately rendered incapable of writing another word. How can he with that infernal presence looming over his head in the apartment above? Listening to his footsteps overhead is bad enough, but the sound of his typing freezes poor Kalman's blood. Who is the fiend eviscerating with words over his head? It could even be himself currently being mangled under the relentless pounding of those keys.

Through Kalman's insecurity and anguish Aharon not only launches a wonderfully funny, satiric attack upon both the critics and the writers who inhabit the literary scene in contemporary Israel, but he gives his reader an introduction to the world of Hebrew literature and criticism. We meet the famous and the infamous who shaped 19th century Hebrew thought and letters.

The one who comes in for the most attention is Avraham Uri Kovner, a mean-spirited critic of the 1800s. He took it upon himself to prick pins into what he thought of as the over-inflated egos of early traditionalists from the period in Hebrew literature known as the New Enlightenment. Eventually he became so eaten up with his own vindictiveness that he first lashed out at society by becoming a thief and embezzler, and then at his own people by converting to Christianity and writing anti-Semitic tracts.

The inclusion of Kovner in this tale underlines that although Aharon has chosen satire and humour as his means of dealing with the subject of literature and the relationship between critics and writers, he does not take it lightly. He makes you begin to wonder why, when they both claim to be so passionate about the written word, do critics and the writers seem to be constantly working at cross purposes?

AHARON MEGGED has been publishing since 1938. His fiction has won numerous awards, including the Koret Prize and the French Wizo prize for Foiglman, which was also selected for the Barnes & Noble Discover New Writers Program. He has also been awarded the Bialik, Brenner, and Agnon Prizes, and most recently, the coveted Israel Prize in 2003. He lives in Tel Aviv.