The Book of Psalms
A Translation with Commentary
Robert Alter (Author, University of California, Berkeley)
One of Newsweek’s Best Books of the Year and winner of the Robert Kirsch Award for Lifetime Achievement.
A cornerstone of the scriptural canon, The Book of Psalms has been a source of solace and joy for countless readers over millennia. This timeless poetry is beautifully wrought by a scholar whose translation of The Five Books of Moses was hailed as a “godsend” by Seamus Heaney and a “masterpiece” by Robert Fagles. Alter’s The Book of Psalms captures the simplicity, the physicality, and the coiled rhythmic power of the Hebrew, restoring the remarkable eloquence of these ancient poems. His learned and insightful commentary illuminates the obscurities of the text.
Book Details
- Paperback
- October 2009
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ISBN 978-0-393-33704-4
- 5.7 × 8.2 in
/ 518 pages
- Territory Rights: Worldwide
Other Formats
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Hardcover
Awards
Endorsements & Reviews
“Alter takes us back to the essence of the meaning. . . . Everything is clearer, seeming to have been rinsed not in the baptismal waters of the New Testament but in the life-giving water of the desert.” — James Wood, The New Yorker
“A considerable achievement. . . . Alter holds me to his darkly economical texts.” — Harold Bloom, New York Review of Books
“You think you know these texts . . . until you read Alter, who reignites their beauty in bracing and unexpected ways.” — Malcolm Jones, Newsweek
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