Lilach Nethanel

This book was written following the discovery of an unknown manuscript of a Hebrew novel in the estate of David Fogel, stored in the Gnazim Archive in Tel Aviv. After decoding it, it became clear that it was a genuine unknown Hebrew novel and was given the title “Viennese Romance”. This book traces the story of finding and deciphering the manuscript, and includes a re-evaluation of Fogel’s works in light of its discovery, written in Hebrew before his only other Hebrew novel known to date, “Married Life” (1929-1930). General reflection on the author’s writing process is expressed here using the “Fogel case”. Fogel’s writing, in both senses of the word, is discussed. The first part of the book discusses the three places where the writing occurs: the manuscript itself, the changing dimensions of the archive, and the work of writing as encoding. The second part of the book is a scientific editing of the three openings in “Viennese Romance”. The scientific edition reveals the full range of changes characteristic of manuscripts – including deletions, amendments, variants and hesitations – all of which necessarily remain outside the final version of the printed book.