Eli Eshed

Who is Eli Eshed?

Eli Eshed is an Israeli researcher of popular culture who has spent considerable time and effort analyzing the Israeli pulp magazines and paperbacks of the 1950s and 1960s.

He made an investigation, especially the pirated Tarzan brochures which were highly popular among Israeli youths at the time, published anonymously and without any authorization from the estate of Edgar Rice Burroughs. In 2000, he published a very limited edition of a Hebrew book called Tarzan in the Holy Land. This book is a history and a bibliography of the Tarzan phenomenon in Israel, where there were more than a thousand original stories about Tarzan. Although it is in Hebrew, it is illustrated throughout with dust wrappers and pictorial bindings from all the main Tarzan series published in Israel. It is then a book of interest even for the majority who do not read Hebrew.

In 2002, Eli Eshed published From Tarzan to Zbeng about the pulp literature of Israel. This book became a best seller and earned Eshed the title "Writer of the Year" from Maariv. He also researched the adventures of many other pulp icons, such as Patrick Kim, a fictional Korean CIA agent using karate against a variety of enemies worldwide.