Task of This Translator Paperback - 2005

"If Hasak-Lowy were a juggler, he would be the kind who could juggle an elephant and an orange at the same time. Instead he is a writer whose stories combine the global with the personal in ways that are incisive, thought-provoking, smart and, most importantly, FUNNY."--Myla Goldberg, author of Bee Season
Stylistically daring, morally perplexing, and outrageously funny, Todd Hasak-Lowy's The Task of This Translator marks the debut of a writer of extraordinary talent. In these seven stories, Hasak-Lowy finds entry into daunting matters such as genocide and obesity through the absurd experiences of a series of unlikely protagonists.
A journalist sets out to write an investigative piece on a dieting company that uses bodyguards to protect overeaters from themselves, but loses his journalistic bearings when he becomes a client and is paired up with a bodyguard of his own. In the coffee shop of Israel's Holocaust memorial museum a stale pastry triggers a brawl between an American tourist and the Israeli cashier. An unwilling and mostly unqualified slacker finds himself cast into the role of translator for the bitter reunion of a family torn apart years earlier by unspecified brutality.
"Todd Hasak-Lowy's brilliant combination of cynicism and compassion gives his storytelling its unique power."--Etgar Keret, author of The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God
Todd Hasak-Lowy was born in Detroit. He is an assistant professor of modern Hebrew literature at the University of Florida in Gainesville, where he lives with his wife and two daughters.