Meir Shalev

Meir Shalev (Nahalal, 1948 – Alonei Abba, 2023) was an Israeli writer whose work, written in Hebrew, moved between the novel, non-fiction about the Bible and children's literature. Born in the Jezreel Valley, he belonged to a generation that grew up alongside the early kibbutzim and the army, and his view of that land and its people made him one of the most widely read and translated Hebrew authors of his time.

After serving in the Golani Brigade, where he fought in the Six-Day War and was wounded a few months later by fire from his own side, he studied psychology. That training served as a starting point for his first work in radio and television, where he presented satirical reports and for a time moderated Erev Shabbat, a Friday-night programme on Israel's Channel One. His literary career began later, around the age of forty, with the novel The Blue Mountain (1988), about the pioneers who settled the Jezreel Valley.

His fiction blends family chronicle, humour and rural memory, with plain characters and a prose close to everyday speech. Shalev returned again and again to the biblical text, reinterpreting it from a personal angle in non-fiction such as Bible Now and In the Beginning. He also wrote many children's books and a weekly column for the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. Among his adult novels, Esau and A Pigeon and a Boy stand out, the latter winning the Brenner Prize and the National Jewish Book Award.

His books were translated into many languages, giving a Hebrew writer an international readership that was unusual for his language. In 2018 he was made a Chevalier of France's Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. His legacy rests mainly on his portrait of rural Israeli life and on his way of reading the Bible as a book of human stories.