הג'יגולו מקונגו וטיפוסים אחרים

כל כתבי חנוך לוין

by Hanoch Levin, חנוך לוין

חנוך לוין היה יוצר עתיר-ז'אנרים. בספר זה הוא מופיע בחלק גדול של קשת כתיבתו – סיפורים ופרוזה קצרה ואבסורדית; מערכונים גרוטסקיים מצחיקים עד אימה; מערכוני-בזק של שתיים-שלוש רפליקות; פזמונים, או פארודיות על הפזמון הרגשני; שירים קצרים; וכן תסריטונים – דיאלוג מרתק של לוין עם הסרטון האילם.

גלריה ססגונית של דמויות, החל בצ'וֹפֶּק ואַפּצ'יק, היוצאים אל העולם, דרך הג'יגולו מקונגו, קרוליין נסיכת מונקו, הזקנה מכלכותא, הקשישה שקיבלה הצעה רשמית מאת ממשלת סין להיות הרמטכ"ל של צבא סין, הזקנה היפאנית שחולמת על טורקי שרץ על שפת הגנגס בתרבוש אדום, ועד אלוהים בשעת בריאת חלקים מסוימים בגוף האשה. אפילו פירנדֶלו וברכט צצים פתאום, לא ידוע איך, וכולם אוחזים קצה של חוט לא מחובר לשום דבר ונצפים תחת זכוכית-מגדלת ענקית.

זו המהדורה המקורית של הספר, מ-1994. מהדורה נוספת ראתה אור ב-2000 בסדרת כל כתבי חנוך לוין.

332 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Hanoch Levin (1943-1999), one of Israel`s leading dramatists, was born in Tel Aviv. He grew up in a religious home in the Neve Shaanan neighborhood in southern Tel Aviv. As a child, he attended the Yavetz State Religious School. In the 1950s, his brother, David, who was nine years older than him, worked as an assistant director at the Cameri Theater. Hanoch attended Zeitlin Religious High School in Tel Aviv. After ninth grade, he left school to help support the family. He worked as a messenger boy for the Herut company and took classes at a night school for working youth at the Ironi Aleph middle school. There he joined a drama club. After serving his compulsory military duty, Levin began to study philosophy and Hebrew literature at Tel Aviv University (1964-1967).
At first he wrote poetry, but later concentrated on the theater. He became resident playwright of the Cameri Theater in Tel Aviv and also worked with Habimah, Israel`s national theater.
Levin wrote 50 plays, 34 of which have been staged. His work includes comedies, tragedies and satiric cabarets, most of which he directed himself. In addition, he published five books of short stories and poems and a book for children. He received numerous theater awards both in Israel and abroad - most notably at the Edinburgh Festival -and his plays have been staged around the world. Levin was awarded the Bialik Prize in 1994.

Reviews

[Oz Gold · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is something almost cruel in how precisely Hanoch Levin captures the human spirit – its filth and futility, its desperate grasp for meaning, its naked yearning for something more. In The Gigolo from Congo, Levin leads us through a world so bleak it becomes almost comic, or perhaps so comic it becomes unbearably bleak.

His characters dream – of distant lands, of exotic pleasures, of grand love affairs, of a life that means something. But deep down, they know: they will never get there.
The dreams themselves become part of the tragedy.

Levin's genius lies in this unbearable tension – between the grotesque and the sublime, between the laughable and the utterly heart-breaking.
His writing, razor-sharp and unflinching, peels the skin off bourgeois fantasy to expose the soft, sad underbelly of our condition. It is not just theatre. It is existential vivisection.