Curt Leviant (born 1932, Vienna ) is a retired Jewish Studies professor, as well as a novelist and translator.

Personal life and career

His parents were Jacques and Fenia Leviant. They spoke Yiddish at home, and encouraged their son's interest in Yiddish literature and theater. He came to the United States in 1938. He took a BA from CUNY (Brooklyn), followed in 1957 by an MA from Columbia, with a thesis on Lamed Shapiro. From 1960, he taught Hebraic studies at Rutgers, taking a PhD there in 1966 with a doctoral thesis that was a translation with commentary, published in 1969 as King Artur: A Hebrew Authurian Romance of 1279. He married Erika Leah Pfeifer, they had three daughters, Dalya, Dvora, Shulamit. Leviant was also a book reviewer, usually of Jewish authors, with reviews appearing in The New York Times, The Nation, and other publications, especially Jewish media. In more recent years, he has been, co-authoring with his wife, a Jewish travel writer. According to Lewis Fried, "his fiction is nuanced, surprising, and often arabesque, dealing with the demands of the present and the claims of the past."

Novels

Shorter fiction

Translations

Leviant has translated from Hebrew and Yiddish to English, including: