Le-avret et Sherlok Holmes: Parshiya safrutit ideologit me-tkufat ha-Mandat [Hebraizing Sherlock Holmes: a literary and ideological affair from the British Mandate period]

Review of: Hebraizing Sherlock Holmes: a literary and ideological affair from the British Mandate period by Reuven Gafni, Jerusalem, Yad Ben-Tzvi, 2022, 238 pp., 92 NIS (paperback), ISBN 9789652174499

Reuven Gafni’s 2022 book, Le-avret et Sherlok Holmes: Parshiya safrutit ideologit me-tkufat ha-Mandat [Hebraizing Sherlock Holmes: A Literary and Ideological Affair from the British Mandate Period], is an engaging historical account of the import of Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous detective into the emerging national culture of the Yishuv. By describing the various translations and adaptations of Sherlock Holmes stories into Hebrew, Gafni opens a window to the translation endeavors of a budding literary scene during some of its foundational years. Only seemingly a local affair, the book demonstrates the potential of translation phenomena, which often go unnoticed, to shed light on the ideological interplay betw een languages and cultures. Gafni also adds a useful bibliography of Hebrew translations of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories from 1920 to 1956, and, as an appendix, two previously unpublished …