Hanan J. Ayalti (1910–1992)

Hanan J. Ayalti was the pen name of Chonel Klenbort, born to a Jewish family in Soposkien, Russian Empire (present-day Poland). In 1929, at age 19, he emigrated to Palestine, then part of the Ottoman Empire, where he published his debut novel, written in Hebrew. He went to Paris, France, in 1934 to study at the Sorbonne. During World War II, he escaped the Nazi Occupation to Uruguay, where he lived from 1942 to 1946. He arrived in the USA in 1946 and settled in New York City. There he became editorial secretary for the labor Zionist weekly Der Yidisher Kemfer. Ayalti also wrote in Yiddish, producing novels such as Der hotel vos ekzistirt nit (The Hotel That Doesn't Exist, 1944) and Vayter fun Bruklin (No Escape From Brooklyn, 1966). Some of his writings first appeared in serialized form in The Forward newspaper. He also was a regular contributor of articles and stories to magazines and journals such as Commentary, Jewish Frontier, and Midstream. He edited a bi-lingual English-Yiddish volume of quotations and sayings called Yiddish Proverbs (1965). The first English translation of his collected stories, The Presence Is in Exile, Too, was published posthumously in 1997.