Work for the popular book industry started at a very early age, sometimes in high school or while doing military service. It could come about when an acquaintance of the family had a small printing firm or worked in a newspaper. Family members of a publisher would sometimes participate as translators. Some sought work in the pulp fiction industry when they were rejected by mainstream organs. Many young translators were immigrants or children of immigrants. M.Mizrahi told me how he had selected translators and editors from among the young people who constantly swarmed his book stall off Allenby Street, picking the ones who showed interest and understanding. Ezra Narqis had translated a story by Conan Doyle in school, long before he even knew how to pronounce the author's name. A teacher caught him reading a booklet under the desk, and was placated only when Ezra's classmates assured him it was the pupil's own translation. Then Ezra started work in a printing shop of one of his father's friends. He was 14 or 15 at the time. Eli Kedar described how, after his army service, he had tried to be accepted as a journalist, was rejected, and decided to look for a publisher in the bustling commercial area of south Tel Aviv. He had heard there was a man called Nissim, in the Yemenite neighborhood of Shehunat Machalul, who published chapbooks; he literally went from door to door, looking for this man. Arieh Hashavia started as a young reporter for Gadna (monthly publication of the pre-military training program), when still a student. He also started working as a messenger boy and general assistant in Yediot Aharonot. He continued as a reporter for the army magazine Ba’mahaneh. Arieh Karassik started writing thrillers when he was 16; when he could not find a publisher, he borrowed 25 lira from his father and started his own enterprise.

Work was abundant in the periphery. The pay was not high, but it came regularly. G.Ariuch, pen name for Gentilla Broyde, was often reprimanded by her brother for working in the popular literature business. The brother, Ephraim Broyde, translated poetry and Shakespearian drama for respectable publishers such as Sifryat Poalim, and he often begged her to stop working for the "Turk" (Mizrahi's derisive nickname). She refused, so Mizrahi told me, since Mizrahi supplied her with a steady flow of bestsellers. Around 50 books are listed under her name in the library catalogue, most of them for central mainstream publishers like Am Oved or Zmora Bitan. Yet at least seven were translated for Mizrahi, among them Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind and books by Louis Bromfield or Daphne du Maurier. Loyalty to one publisher was rare. Eli Kedar wrote 12 books per month, in the Wild West pseudotranslation series Buck Jones that he produced for his first publisher Nissim, earning 50 lira per book. Only two a month were published. Ezra Narqis offered to pay him 75 lira per book and publish as many as he could write. Kedar accepted the offer. When Narqis discovered Miron Uriel could translate/write more quickly, he soon took him on instead. Apparently, Uriel could produce a booklet in two hours. He never re-read what he had written.

The most interesting common denominator of the group is their anti-establishment political involvement. Many of them had been political activists in their early youth. Their subversive activities varied, diverging either to the extreme left or to the extreme right.

Here are some portraits to illustrate the nature of the translators in the periphery.

The first is that of Maxim Gilan, poet and political dissident under his true name, and diligent translator of erotica under the pseudonym G. Kasim (similar letters). Gilan was born in Spain and came to Israel as a poor refugee from France in 1944. As a young boy he enlisted in LEHI, the extreme anti-British underground movement also known as the Stern Gang, and after the establishment of the State he was a devout anti-Ben-Gurion activist, playing a part in at least three underground sects that planned to overthrow the first Prime Minister and even threatened his life. He was imprisoned twice, for 14 months, then for 59 days for suspected involvement in the Kaestner assassination. When he was co-editor with Shmuel Mor of the porn magazine Bul, they were accused of publishing the details of the Mossad involvement in the assassination of Moroccan dissident Mahdi Ben-Barqa, the Mossad allegedly having helped extradite the Moroccan to the French authorities. After the Six Day War, Gilan exiled himself to Paris, where he became editor of Israel & Palestine, an English-language pro-Palestinian magazine. As Maxim Gilan he went on publishing poetry books. Under the pseudonym G.Kasim, however, Gilan translated and wrote erotic literature for "Eros", financed by Eli Kedar in the early 1960s. The books came out repeatedly and were re-printed in 1968. He was the translator of Fanny Hill, Scented Garden, Arabian Nights, Turk's Pleasures and The Black Woman's Lust. Gilan eventually came back to Israel, where he won several literary prizes. He died in 2005.

No less diligent was Eliezer Carmi, translator and writer with more than 300 books to his name (according to the National Library catalogue). He used several pseudonyms: A.Ben-Dan, Azriel Macir . He may have been hiding behind the female-pseudonym Shula Effroni, first translator of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer. Carmi has been described by his friends as a big jovial fellow, a womanizer, who was a tireless writer/ translator. He was born in Russia in 1918 and came to Israel in 1924, at the age of seven. According to Eli Eshed he did not even finish elementary school. At a very early age he co-founded a small publishing firm called Twentieth Century Publishing. They put out chapbooks: thrillers and detective stories adopted from English literature. When World War II broke out, Carmi joined the Jewish Brigade of the British army (where he first discovered Damon Runyon), then the IDF. When the war was over, he was left with out work. He founded Carmi & Naor, and published hard-cover books of good quality. However, the costly production led to financial difficulties, and he had to work for publishers like M.Mizrahi or Uri Shalgi (Eshed 2006).