Shay K. Azoulay
Born (1979-12-24) December 24, 1979
Tel Aviv
Occupationnovelist, playwright, translator
NationalityIsraeli
CitizenshipIsrael
Period2005–present
GenreLiterary Fiction
Website
skazoulay.wixsite.com/skazoulay/

Shay K. Azoulay (Hebrew: שי אזולאי) is an Israeli writer who writes in English and Hebrew.

Plays

Azoulay's debut play, "The Platoon", a satire about the IDF, won first place in the 2012 staged reading festival "Zav Kriah".[1] The play was staged in Tel Aviv's Tzavtah Theater in 2014-2015 and received good reviews in the press, including a review by prominent theater critic Michael Handelzalts, who compared it to the work of Hanoch Levin.[2] The play also stirred controversy, following an article which mistakenly claimed that the play depicts IDF soldiers raping Palestinian women. A member of the Tel Aviv municipal council sent a letter to the theater, demanding that they stop the staging of the play.[3] Azoulay's other work includes the one-act play "Shade", which participated in the Tzavtah Theater's 2012 Short play Festival, and "Barabas" - a reimagining of Christopher Marlowe's "The Jew of Malta".

Fiction

Azoulay's debut novel Lazaretto was published in summer 2019 in Hebrew.[4] A review in Haaretz described the novel as “an ambitious, high-tension novel, seeped in paranoia... Lazaretto is a disturbing and stirring dystopia which haunted me while I was reading it and even after I’d finished.”[5] The novel was named "Book of the Year" by LaIsha Magazine which dubbed it "the novel that predicted the pandemic"[6]

Azoulay has also written a series of short stories entitled "Minor Writers of the Entropic Age". These stories include "The Invention of H. P. Lovecraft", published in Flapperhouse Magazine,[7] "The Bard of Hastings" published in The Cost of Paper [8] and "Permaculture", which won second prize in the 2016 Zoetrope: All-Story short fiction contest.[9] Also included in this series is "Jacob Wallenstein, Notes for a Future Biography", a work of fiction regarding a "forgotten" Israeli science fiction novelist and his 1,000 page magnum opus. In 2013 Azoulay submitted this story to Tablet magazine, claiming that it was a true account of the nonexistent writer's life and work. An editor at the magazine was initially excited by the story, but eventually discovered that it was a hoax, though he decided to publish the story anyway, together with a forward explaining his discovery of the hoax.[10]

Other short works by Azoulay have appeared in The Molotov Cocktail and McSweeney's Internet Tendency.

Translations

Azoulay also works as a Hebrew to English translator, translating non-fiction,[11] children's literature, and plays, including works by playwright Hanoch Levin.[12]

References

  1. ↑ IDF Satire wins first prize - Ynet, 1 April 2012 (in Hebrew)
  2. ↑ "The Platoon" - Princes of the Washtub - Haaretz, 18 January 2015 (in Hebrew)
  3. ↑ Senior Tel Aviv Council Member: Tzavtah is Demeaning the IDF - Ynet, 6 January 2015 (in Hebrew)
  4. ↑ Lazaretto, Shay K. Azoulay (in Hebrew)
  5. ↑ Lazaretto: In This Novel the "State of Tel Aviv" Becomes a Dystopian Reality - Haaretz, 20 January 2020 (in Hebrew)
  6. ↑ "Lazaretto - The Novel that Predicted the Pandemic" Maya Levin, LaIsha, p. 51, 14 September 2020.
  7. ↑ The Invention of H. P. Lovecraft - Flapperhouse Magazine, Fall 2016.
  8. ↑ The Bard of Hastings - The Cost of Paper Vol. 5, Spring 2018.
  9. ↑ Twentieth Annual Zoetrope: All-Story Short Fiction Contest - List of winners, Zoetrope: All-Story
  10. ↑ Jacob Wallenstein Is the Greatest Science-Fiction Writer to Never Have Lived - Tablet Magazine, 16 October 2013
  11. ↑ Yom Kippur War: Syrians at the Border by Danny Asher
  12. ↑ Job and Jesus Combine to Overcome - New York Times review of 2006 production of Hanoch Levin's Job's Passion translated by Azoulay
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