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10 of the most famous Israeli authors

Most works classed as Israeli literature are written in the Hebrew language, although some Israeli authors write in Yiddish, English, Arabic and Russian. The development of modern Hebrew literature represents an almost unique phenomenon in world literature. It is now generally assumed that Hebrew ceased being the spoken language of most Palestinian Jews even before the close of the biblical period.

Poetry, and not prose, was the dominant medium in Hebrew literature until the mid-20th century. Below are the 10 of the most famous Israeli authors;

1. Etgar Keret

Etgar Keret – Wikipedia

Etgar Keret was born on August 20^th 1967 in Ramat Gan, Israel. He is an Israeli writer known for his short stories, graphic novels, and scriptwriting for film and television. His writing style is lean, using everyday language, slang, and dialect.

He is created with bringing a renewed surge in popularity for the short story form in Israel in the second half of the 1990s.

His most recognized work is his second book, Missing Kissinger, a collection of fifty very short stories. Each story is no more than a couple of pages long, presented in laconic sentences with use of intentionally spare, antiliterary vocabulary. The protagonists are Average Joe’s taking impossible things seriously and grave matters lightly.

2. Amos Oz

Amos Oz – Wikipedia

Amos Oz was born Amos Klausner on 4^th May 1939 in Jerusalem, Mandatory Palestine. He was an Israeli writer, novelist, journalist, and intellectual who is one of “Israel’s most prolific writers and respected intellectuals” as The New York Times worded it in an obituary.

He was the author of 40 books, including novels, short story collections, children’s books, and essays, and his work has been published in 45 languages, more than that of any other Israeli writer.

Today, in addition to his many achievements in writing, he is remembered as one of the first Israelis to advocate a two-state solution to the Israeli鈥揚alestinian conflict after the Six-Day War. He did so in a 1967 article “Land of our Forefathers” in the Labor newspaper Davar. ”

3. David Grossman

David Grossman – Wikipedia

David Grossman was born on January 25, 1954, in Jerusalem, Israel. He is an Israeli author whose fictional works often return to the themes of childhood, grief and solitude, while his non-fiction shines a spotlight on the dilemmas of life in Israel, the ongoing dispute with the Palestinians, occupation and the loneliness that comes with being a leftist.

In 2017, he was awarded the Man Booker International Prize in conjunction with his frequent collaborator and translator, Jessica Cohen, for his novel A Horse Walks Into a Bar.

In addition to his prolific writing, he is an outspoken left-wing peace activist, he supports social equality and egalitarianism, frequently in opposition of social hierarchy.

4. Ruth Almog

Ruth Almog – Wikipedia

Ruth Almog was born 15 May 1936 in Petah Tikva, Mandate Palestine. She is an Israeli novelist whose writings are recognized for their awareness of the condition of 鈥渘on-belonging鈥� in the land of Israel, particularly her first collection of stories, Marguerita鈥檚 Nightly Charities (1969).

 Almog has received the Ze’ev Prize twice (1985; 2000), the Brenner Prize (1989), the Yad Vashem Prize (2000), an Andersen Honor Citation (2000), the Agnon Prize (2001), the Neuman Prize (2004), the German Gerty Spies Prize for Literature (Rheinland-Pfalz, 2004), the Bialik Prize for Lifetime Achievement (2006), the Prime Minister’s Prize twice (1995; 2007) and the ACUM Prize for Lifetime Achievement (2011).

5. Meir Shalev

Meir Shalev – Wikipedia

Meir Shalev was born in Nahalal, Israel on 29July 1948. He is an Israeli writer and newspaper columnist for the daily Yedioth Ahronoth who is known to never mix fiction with politics, a maxim that sets him apart from his fellow Israeli authors. Instead, Shalev鈥檚 whimsical and satirical novels are grounded in the history and legends of pre-state Israel.

He has received many awards for his work, including the National Jewish Book Award and Israel鈥檚 Brenner Prize, both for A Pigeon and a Boy, A mesmerizing novel of two love stories, separated by half a century but connected by one enchanting act of devotion

6. Zeruya Shalev

Zeruya Shalev – Wikipedia

Zeruya Shalev was born on 13^th May 1959 in Kvutzat Kinneret, Israel. She is a bestselling Israeli author whose novels are explorations of the intimate fluctuations of the mind of her characters. She has created unforgettable figures in her four preceding novels, Love Life (2001), Husband and Wife (2004), Thera (2005), and The Remains of Love (2012). Shalev has published six novels, a book of poetry and two children’s book.

Her most recent work Pain, a powerful, astute novel that exposes how old passions can return, testing our capacity to make choices about what is most essential in life, a must-read.

7. A. B. Yehoshua

A. B. Yehoshua – Wikipedia

Abraham B. Yehoshua was born in Jerusalem, Mandatory Palestine on December 9, 1936. He is an Israeli novelist, essayist, and playwright, published as A. B. Yehoshua. Author. He is regarded as a prominent figure in the “new wave” generation of Israeli writers, who differed from their predecessors in focusing more closely on the individual, and on interpersonal concerns, rather than the psychology of a group.

Yehoshua is the author of eleven novels, three books of short stories, four plays, and four collections of essays, including Ahizat Moledet (Homeland Lesson, 2008), a book of reflections on identity and literature.

His best received novel, Mr Mani, is a multigenerational look at Jewish identity and Israel through five conversations that go backwards in time to cover over 200 years of Jewish life in Jerusalem and around the Mediterranean basin.

8. Yehudit Hendel

Yehudith Hendel – Wikipedia

Yehudit Hendel was born on October 25, 1921, in Warsaw. She was an award-winning Israeli author. She wrote novels, short stories, and non-fiction whose work focuses on the Holocaust, displaced persons, people with depression, and the terminally ill.

Hendel has been described as being a unique, moving, powerful voice with psychological depth. Yehudit delves into man’s soul and into the everyday existential problems with delicate observations, and out of recognition of people’s tragic fates.

One of her must reads is Re岣�ov ha-Maderegot, Street of Steps English translation, a social novel depicting the disparity between two classes in the new Jewish state: the poverty-stricken, disadvantaged Oriental Israelis, living in downtown Haifa, and the established, influential Ashkenazi elite, living on Mount Carmel.

9. Yuval Noah Harari

Yuval Noah Harari – Wikipedia

Yuval Noah Harari was born on 24^th February in 1976 in Kiryat Atta, Israel. He is an Israeli public intellectual, historian and a professor in the Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His writings examine free will, consciousness, intelligence, happiness and suffering.

His books also examine the possible consequences of a futuristic biotechnological world in which intelligent biological organisms are surpassed by their own creations; he has said, “Homo sapiens as we know them will disappear in a century or so”.

10. Leah Goldberg

Leah Goldberg – Wikipedia

Leah Goldberg or Lea Goldberg was born on May 29, 1911, in K枚nigsberg, now Kaliningrad, East Prussia, German Empire. She was a prolific Hebrew-language poet, author, playwright, literary translator, and comparative literary researcher whose writings are considered classics of Israeli literature.

Goldberg wrote Hebrew poetry, drama, and children’s literature. Leah鈥檚 books for children, among them “A Flat for Rent” and “Miracles and Wonders” have become classics of Hebrew-language children’s literature.

In addition to her great writing skill, she has exemplary knowledge of seven languages. This enabled her to translate numerous foreign literary works exclusively into Modern Hebrew from Russian, Lithuanian, German, Italian, French, and English.