The Global Novel: a literature podcast
The Global Novel is a podcast that surveys the narratology of world literature and history of translation from antiquity to modernity with a critical lens and aims to make academic education in literature accessible to the world.
The Global Novel: a literature podcast
DOG—A Fiction (2025)
Dog—the U.S. debut of Israeli writer Yishay Ishi Ron—delivers an honest and unflinching portrait of a veteran battling trauma and addiction.
The story follows Geller, a former Israeli commando officer whose life unravels the aftermath of war. Now adrift in Tel Aviv, he struggles with PTSD, addiction, and the disorienting pull of memory. On the margins of society, Geller forges tentative connections—with Doris, a woman whose loyalty offers both comfort and challenge, and with a stray dog who becomes his unlikely companion but emotional anchor.
Written originally in Hebrew and long-listed for the Sapir Prize, one of Israel’s most prestigious literary awards, the novel now reaches English-speaking readers in a translation that preserves both its intensity and lyricism.
Ishi, is not only the author but also a survivor of PTSD, having served in an elite IDF combat unit. His writing channels lived experience into fiction, and it shows how storytelling can give shape to pain, reshape it, and transcend beyond it. Joining him is Yardenne Greenspan, a Tel Aviv–born writer and translator. Yardenne is a graduate of Columbia University’s MFA program in fiction and literary translation, and definitely has brought some of the most urgent voices in Hebrew literature into English.
Recommended Reading:
Author's facebook --> https://www.facebook.com/yishay.ron.1
Author's Instagram --> https://www.instagram.com/yishayron/
Author's Twitter--> https://x.com/IshiRon1
Author's Linkedin--> https://www.linkedin.com/in/yishay-ishi-ron-b2090594/
Welcome to Beyond Words. Today we turn to a Stark New novel that reckons with the scars of war, the weight of memory, and the fight to stay alive. Talk, the US debut of Israeli writer Ishai Ishi Ran, delivers an honest and unflinching portrait of a veteran battling trauma and addiction. The story follows Galar, a former Israeli commando officer whose life unravels the aftermath of war. Now adrift in Tel Aviv, he struggles with PTSD, addiction, and the disorienting pull of memory. On the margins of society, Galar forges tentative connections with Doris, a woman whose loyalty offers both comfort and challenge, and with a stray dog, who becomes his unlikely companion but emotional anchor. Written originally in Hebrew and long listed for the Sapir Prize, one of Israeli's most prestigious literary awards, the novel now reaches English-speaking readers in a translation that preserves both its intensity and lyricism. Ishii is not only the author but also a true survivor of PTSD, having served in an elite IDF combat unit. His writing channels lived experience into fiction, and it shows how storytelling can give shape to pain, reshape it, and transcend beyond it. Joining him is Yarden Greenspan, a Tel Aviv born writer and translator. Yardan is a graduate of Columbia University's MFA program in fiction and literary translation and definitely has brought some of the most urgent voices in Hebrew literature into English. Well, congratulations. Always keeping readers on edge, always wondering what will happen next. For example, will Doris Love persuade Galler to give up drugs? We also wonder, did Gellar really commit murder? What I'm thinking is what the French novelist Marcel Proust once said. The reader may know there is poison in the cup, but the tension lies in wondering when it will be drunk. Let me begin by asking what first drew you to this way of storytelling and how much of dog comes from your own lived experience.
SPEAKER_03:And when I feel that the tense of what's going to happen with Dory, so who killed who, then I want to know it. And I want to make sure that the author feels the same passion for the plot or for the characters that I feel. So this is why I think it just led up. You know, literature can be beautiful without tense, it can be beautiful with words, lyrics, with a good story. Not only war veterans, although Geller is a war veteran with PTSD, and I myself a survivor of PTSD. But you can have, you can see PTSD all around us, sexual PTSD and accident, and all of us actually carry with us wounds.
SPEAKER_00:What would you want to say to someone who still suffers from PTSD or addiction?
SPEAKER_03:Don't be ashamed. What happened to you can happen to anyone. We can never know how thin the skin is, how fragile our heart and soul is. And the opposite. If you are hurting during war or if you are struggling under injuries and PTSD or other mental illness, it's in in my perspective now, it shows that you are more interesting interesting, more artistic, more uh gentle, more uh delicate and sensitive. No one wants to feel bad, but if you already are, so know the advantages of being sensitive and compress yourself. And this is very important. And I also want to tell people that redo recognize the PTSD in themselves, recognize it in others. See that they know that the people on the street which are begging for money, they are not there because it's an easy, you know, easy job to make money. They are you know using drugs or they are using alcohol and they are begging or they are homeless because something happened to them. And be compassionate and know that those people, even if you cannot help them really, uh at least have the compassion and and know that the there is a reason in their past that they are hurt. It got them there and they didn't want to be there.
SPEAKER_00:Well, you eventually saw therapy, right? And what pushed you to take that important and even transformational step? And what do you think it really takes to heal?
SPEAKER_03:I would be very amazed to know if someone really gets healed. Okay, I mean, from my experience of 30 something years, I had many, many up and downs. And I tried everything. When you when you seek medication, you can start with drugs and alcohol, and then you can try psychiatric medication, and you can try natural and unnatural. Whoever offer you a way to heal, you will take it. And I tried everything. PMDR. At the bottom line, you can work on yourself. You should do stuff that makes you feel better. So go out, uh, swim, do sport, uh, whatever you can. But I don't believe in a perfect uh cube. What drove me to get treatment is just uh that I reached the bottom. And this is what usually happens, okay? When people are denying their suffering, they need to reach a very low point in their life to seek help. Especially in those cases when we are saying to ourselves, no, you know, I was first suffering from nightmares, and Ellie says, Listen, you beat me up at night, go take a treatment. And I said, No, it's just nightmares, everyone has them. And then, even though I was stoned and drunk, I suddenly start feeling the anxiety. And I said, Oh, the anxiety, it's probably because of the drugs. I I will quit drugs, I will take medication. And then it became worse and became panic attacks. So I only combine the different puzzle parts only when I reached the bottom and I collapsed totally. When I understood I didn't sleep and didn't eat and felt depressed and felt panic attacks, not for you know uh 10 minutes, but for days and weeks and months, and I didn't understand that and I was afraid to take benzo because everyone says benzo are addicted. Then I I I had to understand, okay, stop. That's it. Now let's treat it differently. Okay, so this is what brought me to treatment. And I wish people see their uh manifest of PTSD, their symptoms, treat them as soon as possible and not wait really to get so, because then you are on the danger zone. I had thoughts of uh why suffer so much. So I'm sure many, many veterans and many other PTSD victims, if they will not treat it in time, it might be too far, too extreme to handle.
SPEAKER_00:So what does it mean to live with PTSD in a country like Israel where trauma feels like a shared almost national experience?
SPEAKER_03:Suddenly there's a big war, like what happened in the 7th of October. And it's it's all triggers. When the 7th of October happened, you know, I went to my psychologist, and instead of treating myself, I was just sitting and crying. It was so overwhelming what happened to us, to Israelis in Israel. Something that was so horrible, like almost like not almost like the Holocaust, but it was as severe in our perceptions, you know, uh people, children, women raped, killed in such a brutality that we didn't imagine. And in such a surprise, you know, our big country, our strong country suddenly was on the edge of extinction, really. My defense system raised, you know. I wanted to make sure that I well uh protecting my family and that I'm everything was triggering.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I can say that I wasn't in Israel on October 7th, I was in New York. Um, and I I think my first visit post-October 7th was in Passover. So that was in April. So it was a while afterwards. But obviously, uh, people who don't suffer of PTSD don't have the same reactions. But I can tell you that for me and for a lot of other Israelis and Jews in New York, there was something different about our physical reactions in the months following. Every time uh we heard a loud noise, sometimes it was fireworks, sometimes it was uh a car backfiring, we were we jumped. Um if I walk down the street and I see a white pickup truck, which is the same kind of car that Hamas uh terrorists drove through the towns of Israel, I I sort of I find myself jumping a little bit. And I think you're absolutely right that trauma from war or terrorism is kind of a national experience. And in a way, that's comforting because everyone understands it and everyone, you're not alone in it. But I think that probably makes it even worse for those who suffer of actual PTSD. You know, for me, for instance, I I served mandatory military service, but I was not a combat soldier. I've never actually been in combat. So I don't have that reference in my mind. And I think for the people who did experience that, no matter how many years ago, um to live in a country where we deal with it on a regular basis and it's normalized can actually make things more complicated because I think it's easier to miss the signs of distress in a situation like that.
SPEAKER_00:There's recurring and constant symbolism when the character gallery thinks he can bend a spoon, like Uri Gallery, he might return to who he was before. What does that spoon signify? Can we view it as a sort of passive hope for something magic to happen, as you know, that kind of inertia to wish the world changes for you rather than you change yourself from within?
SPEAKER_03:You said it right. I mean, the uh for addict case desurvivors, uh, which is usually goes together, most of most of them or most of us are in some part of our life or addict. It is so hard to get out of being addict, to cut down on the medications. You know, life is hard, life is triggering. And I think that when I had to quit uh drugs, for instance, it was I remember it sometimes worse than the PTSD. You know, I remember I smelled weed for years after I quit, and it was so hard for me. And Geller is in such a low place from a good-looking ass um officer in the army, just returning from Japan, you know, having a beautiful girlfriend and a and an amazing motorcycle, and he's going to study and be a lawyer. Suddenly breaks down, you know, to million pieces, and he loses everything. He loses his family and he loses his work and he loses his life. And I think coming out, growing out from this low place needs a supernatural power in our perceptions. Unless you then start doing it step by step and with loving people that help you and and other mechanisms, you do it slowly. But all of us want like a magic wand that will just, you know, do a magic and makes us well again. And and I think that uh Geller, that uh the younger uh audience maybe doesn't know him, he was in the 70s, like the biggest thing in the world. Like today, there are so many mentalists, you know, uh going all over, and and and you are like, wow, how did they do it? But he was the first one, and by the way, he was himself. I don't know if he was an officer, but he was in uh a paratrooper uh in the Israeli army.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And uh yes, I think that uh watching something so mesmerizing is something that can give uh can can give you false hopes. And this is what Geller is practicing, false hopes.
SPEAKER_01:And I think also there there's a scene in the book where he sits around with his army buddies and they talk about Geller, about Urigeller, and um, you know, his his friends seem to understand what he doesn't, which is it's an act. And because he was big in the 70s, by the time that they're having this conversation, it's almost kind of a joke. Um which in turn says something about the protagonist's situation and the fact that he he's holding on to these things that really obviously he's not gonna be able to bend a spoon with the power of his mind, but also the role models that he's picking for himself are leading him down the wrong paths.
SPEAKER_00:So, Yardan, every form of long-term mental suffering develops its own language of expression. How do you hear the rhythm of depression or solitude? And how do you translate that into English across language and cultural borders?
SPEAKER_01:I think in this book specifically, one thing that stood out to me was the way he sees the world, it's all very aggressive. Um, and the aggression is turned against him. So there's all these little moments where he tries to do something, he tries to manipulate an object, then it doesn't work, and he feels as if the object is mocking him. Or he looks at the sky and he thinks it's early, but because he was stoned, he didn't notice the passage of hours, and so it's dark. And he says something like, uh, the sky puts on an evening costume. Like the even the time of day is like a charade. Uh the purpose of which is to trick him. That kind of language it really illustrates the mental state that he's in, where the world is out to get you, essentially. And or at best, if not out to get you, the world doesn't really care about you and is not going to make an effort to help you. Um and so I did what I do with every book that I translate. Um, you know, Ishii was saying earlier about how he felt that the writing process helped him understand his own mental situation. Um, it's similar for me in translation. I kind of just start. I ask a few questions ahead of time of the author, but then I just dive in. And typically the book teaches me how to translate it, and I try to just really whatever the language is doing, uh whatever the plot is, wherever the plot takes me, I try to just go there. Sometimes it doesn't work. Sometimes things just don't translate naturally enough, and you kind of have to find a different way in. But for the most part, if a book has its own um its own lingo, I will internalize it. And if it doesn't happen right away, then it'll happen at some point during the book. Sometimes it only happens close to the end, and then I have to go back and redo things to sort of to to to to implement what I learned. Um but essentially it's sort of like I I I it's a little gross, but the metaphor that always comes to my mind is it's it's like I'm stepping into the author's skin and I'm kind of like wearing it like a suit, and I'm sitting in front of the computer and I'm writing as if I am, in this case case, Ishii, if he wrote his book in English. That's that's the goal. Sometimes it works better than other times, but um I have to inhabit in that case the state of mind of someone who's out on the streets uh barely surviving and feeling very much attacked by the world.
SPEAKER_00:Well, Ishii, what was it like to see your own voice translated into English? Were there moments of surprise or or even discomfort in hearing yourself in another language?
SPEAKER_03:It gives me a space, a distance between the book I wrote when I read uh your dance work. It was uh helping me to read my book in objective eyes. Okay, because suddenly it was my voice, but it wasn't exactly my words because the words changed to English. Because I'm a sensitive person. It kind of connected me to your den. I don't know how much he knows it, but like I feel there's a code that is now connected between us because I was reading it and I'm like, I thought Ellie, wow, look, look what she did here. It's amazing, you know. And and although I'm the writer, I think that uh in the English version, Yarden is has like a huge part, you know. So it's suddenly a little bit uh dog is a little bit now mine and Yarden in English, not only mine, because she she put such a beautiful voice to the book.
SPEAKER_00:Yarden between two different translation strategies, you know, one is domestication and foreignization. I know you've also studied translation, so domestication emphasizes making the original text sounding more like the target language, and foreignization is completely the opposite by retaining the original flavor, if you will, of the language, syntax, idioms as such. And can you talk about this choice?
SPEAKER_01:First of all, I I just want to thank Ishii for what he said. And I I absolutely feel that cord that connects us, I think that's what happens when it works, you know? Um because it's like now there's it's like there's a piece of my brain and the piece of his brain that are sort of like it's the same. Um in terms of sentence structure, in terms of dialogue, uh I I need uh an English language reader to understand what's going on. And so I might include some words of Hebrew or Arabic, which is also widely used in Israel. Um, I'm always gonna go for writing that feels easily understandable because otherwise I think that it really just gets in the way. But when it comes to almost everything else, um the culture, the way people associate with each other, um, the systems and institutions and everything like that, I'm gonna try to keep it as foreignized as possible. Um and I think to me, it's just um this story would not exist in the same way if it were an American story. Yes, there's uh uh military uh in America, and yes, there are many people who suffer of PTSD, and many of them end up on the streets addicted to drugs. Absolutely. And still it's going to look different. The systems of support are different, the relationships are different. Uh, as we were mentioning earlier, the the way people perceive trauma, the normalization of it has a different effect when you're in Israel.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I I think in order to understand the story properly, it has to be very clearly set where it is set. It ha it has to be rooted in the time and place. Yeah. Um, I also believe, for me, translation, the the beauty of it is the way that it makes places and people that you've never met in your life or never encountered in your life real. Because for most of us, if we're being honest, a country on the other side of the world, we know that it's real in principle, but it's not really real to us. We have no understanding of what the day-to-day looks like, um, how people communicate with each other. And so I think the the important thing about translating and reading works in translation is that it brings people together. And if you're gonna do that, it sort of has to be a little bit foreignized. Uh, I don't want people to be able to read this and just pretend like it's taking place in New York or Chicago or Los Angeles or anywhere else, which is why I do always uh include a little bit of the original language where it feels natural. And uh, you know, I might, if there's a name, a character name that's particularly troublesome for people to read or to pronounce uh if they're not uh Hebrew speakers, maybe I'll change it a little bit. I think people who want to read works in translation want to do, want to put in a little bit of effort of trying to bridge those gaps and understand a different culture.
SPEAKER_00:Fantastic. Well, for Ishii, what do you hope readers, especially American readers, carry with them after reading Dog?
SPEAKER_03:Dog is about uh PTSD and it's a very, very important subject. But I also want people to understand the literary quality of the book, meaning it is important for me that Dog would be read also as a literature work, not only as a PTSD uh discussion or perspective. That's why I feel uh I'm so happy with the work you have done this, because it it puts it in uh such a high level of literature and not you know just another book which is translated, because I read a lot of translation from English or other languages to Hebrew, and sometimes it's very easy to know it was if it was done by like amazing translators or done like mediocre, you know. And I'm so so happy that you know they did a good job because for me it it's very important that people will take it in the libraries, let's say, as a fiction book, okay, and enjoy it also. Not only, but of course, when they finish reading, I want them to think that what they read was written by someone who experienced something like it. And when they stop at the stop line in their car on the way to work, and suddenly someone comes and asks for money, not immediately they would think, oh, you know, I have to suffer it, and close up the window. And but really to see the person and to understand society is very complicated, and lots of parts of society are weak, ill people, or mentally ill people, and they all need attention and need yourself, and they cannot be transparent. And this is what usually happens. So I think dogs, like other books which are written about mental uh disorders, you usually you try to get emphasized and to understand the trauma and the uh illness of the protagonist. So, from my point of view, this is something I want the readers to come out with.
SPEAKER_00:Well, for Yardin, what was the most difficult aspect of bringing this novel into English for you?
SPEAKER_01:Military jargon is always tricky. Um names of units, uh types of weaponry, uh deployment, all that stuff uh is very site-specific. So while all the terms exist in English, they don't always refer to the same things. And do you I also thought it was important to adapt it a little bit to a society where there's military service is not mandatory in most of the most English-speaking countries. And so not everyone speaks that that sort of language fluently. Um other than that, the biggest challenges are always um anything that plays around with language, if it's uh jokes or wordplay, double entendre, stuff like that. Um and also um there's there's a way in which uh Israelis are very direct with each other. And while I did say earlier that I I I that's something that I would definitely preserve in the translation because it's part of the culture, sometimes it's a little bit um it's it's a bit of a delicate game to convey that directness without it coming off to uh a reader as rudeness. When you're translating a book with a protagonist that is uh deeply um wounded um on an emotional level and with sometimes questionable morals, that's always gonna be a bit of a challenge too, because you don't want to sugarcoat it, but you do want, as Ichi said, you want readers to see through into the heart of the person um to see that in essence they are someone who was deeply hurt and is just trying to figure out a way to carry on. That was easy enough to do because the the writing of the original already conveyed that. But when the word choice in English also has to has to keep in line with that.
SPEAKER_00:Well, for Ishii, why do you think literature can be one of the few safe places to speak honestly about trauma?
SPEAKER_03:As a whole is a safer place to speak about trauma because and about art stuff, any and like any art stuff, not only drama. That's why, especially in times like this, like in Israel and in uh Gaza and in from neighboring countries, it is so important to continue to write and to have the voices heard. That's why I think that you know, trying to prevent from Israelis' uh voices in culture now uh to be heard, it's not very helpful at all because our voices are important, and sometimes if you try to hear them, you will hear different things than what you think. And it's it has no political voice, it has an emotional voice. You can easily recognize this voice when you read about. The dog itself, which Gela says he was not a Hamas dog, he was not a jihad dog, he was not a Jewish dog, he had no beard, he had no colors of Hamas. It's just a stray dog, you know. It was happened to be in Gaza, and then he happens to be in Tel Aviv. And this is something very important. People, you know, when they if they do try to read dogs, they will understand that dog is uh empathic to the injured people of the war, not only to the Israeli side, but to the Palestinian side, and to uh what war is doing to people anywhere? It's the same, like you know, I I enjoy so much to read books from Egypt or from Arab countries and you know listen to their voices.
SPEAKER_00:I've heard Doc is being adapted into a film right now. So, how involved are you, Ishii, in the process, and how do you feel about seeing the story reimagined on screen?
SPEAKER_03:Very excited. Radricklis is a very acclaimed uh director and producer, he's now finishing running with his uh new movie that was uh reading Lolita in Tehran. When he approached me, uh it was like so exciting. And at first, you know, I just uh said, okay, let him try and see. But then he returned and said, Okay, he got the first uh fans for the for making the screenplay, and so then he had he really bought the the rights, and it became much more uh real and uh I'm very excited. He will start handling dog when he finished uh his current uh movie, which is very successful uh internationally. So he's like flying around and doing a lot of uh interviews and uh with uh with reading Lolita Interra. So uh we we said we will meet in like a week or two and start to think about it uh exactly how to do. But again, it's his voice. I would not interfere with the other work, I will not interfere with uh movie unless he asks my opinion, of course. But I made my art and when then when it transformed to something which others are much more expert than I am, I will uh, you know, put my head down and say, okay, do your what you're good at, and and of course, I'm very, very excited, and I'm looking forward to seeing Dog on the Big Screen here.
SPEAKER_00:Well, congratulations again. Thank you for joining me on Beyond Words for this conversation about Dog. My gratitude to Ishii and Yardan for their openness to talk about trauma and for their creative inspirations, and to you, my listeners, for walking with us into this difficult but vital terrain of literature.
SPEAKER_03:So, Claire, thank you so much for having us. Just to say that uh we would love the audience to follow us, Yordan and myself, in our uh social networks and my YouTube channel. We are now uh finishing a new novel which uh Dan also translated an amazing novel, which uh if you will follow us, you will know more about it.