Todd Hasak-Lowy

Todd Hasak-Lowy (born 1969, Detroit, Michigan) - author, professor, and translator known for his fiction for both adults and young readers. He lived in Israel for a year on a kibbutz after high school. He is currently a professor of Creative Writing and Literature at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Previously, he taught Hebrew language and literature at the University of Florida. He has translated 5 or more books of current leading Israeli authors, including a number in the mystery/crime genre. His own first novel, Captives, was published in 2008. Other notable books include the story collection The Task of This Translator and young adult titles like 33 Minutes and Me Being Me Is Exactly as Insane as You Being You. He is married to an Israeli-American and has in-laws in Israel, leading him to describe himself as an “insider” who “inhabits two different worlds”. He feels a specific, intense connection to Tel Aviv, keeping a map of the city on his office wall. In Captives, this familiarity allows him to move beyond a tourist’s perspective, instead depicting the city as a complex, modern space that mirrors the protagonist’s internal “spiritual barrenness” and search for meaning.

Captives follows the midlife and spiritual crisis of a Hollywood screenwriter who impulsively travels to Tel Aviv in search of answers. The novel explores the intersection of personal failure and global politics, the “spiritual barrenness” of success, and the seductive, destructive nature of violent fantasies, played out in a Tel Aviv setting. [Google/AI]

Hasak-Lowy, Todd, (Captives [hc, Spiegel & Grau, 2008]) 978-0385527736