"A modern classic....Thrilling and constantly illuminating."―Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book World Through a distinguished career of critical scholarship and translation, Robert Alter has equipped us to read the Hebrew Bible as a powerful, cohesive work of literature. In this landmark work, Alter's masterly translation and probing commentary combine to give contemporary readers the definitive edition of The Five Books . Winner of the PEN Center USA Literary Award for Translation and the Koret Jewish Book Award for Translation, a Newsweek Top 15 Book, Los Angeles Times Favorite Book, and San Francisco Chronicle Best Book. A godsend. The foundational texts are here given their due in prose at once modern and magnificently cadenced. Immediately readable. -- Seamus Heaney, Times Literary Supplement Engrossing...the translation [that] deserves to become the version in which future generations encounter this strange and inexhaustible book. -- Judith Shulevitz, New York Times Book Review The poets will rejoice. Alter's language ascends to a rare purity through plainness that equals the plainness of the Hebrew. -- Cynthia Ozick, The New Republic Robert Alter 's translation of the Hebrew Bible, the magnificent capstone to a lifetime of distinguished scholarly work, has won the PEN Center Literary Award for Translation. His immense achievements in scholarship ranging from the eighteenth-century European novel to contemporary Hebrew and American literature earned Alter the Robert Kirsch Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Los Angeles Times . A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, Alter is the Class of 1937 Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley.