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Pioneer singer Shoshana Damari dies at 83 |
| By: Associated Press |
| Published: August 22, 2006 |
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Israeli writer Yizhar Smilansky, whose work shed early light on the moral dilemmas that arose during Israel's campaign for independence, died Monday of heart failure in the southern town of Gedera, hospital officials said. He was 89.
Smilansky, better known by his pen name S. Yizhar, was widely considered one of Israel's most illustrious writers.
"Yizhar will be remembered as the main founders of the first Israeli-born generation of writers. He was part of the first sabra (native-born) generation and he has written at length about it," said Israeli writer Aron Appelfeld.
Smilansky was born in 1916 in the central town of Rehovot to a family of Russian immigrants who were members of the Zionist pioneer intelligentsia.
He fought in the 1948 war that accompanied the birth of Israel and was a lawmaker in the Israeli parliament for 17 years as a follower of David Ben-Gurion.
Smilansky studied at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and at Harvard University in Massachusetts, where he earned a doctorate. He later taught at Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University as a literature professor.
His writing focused on the world of the pre-State Jewish community in the Holy Land and the war of 1948. He wrote of pioneers, soldiers and farmers, and explored the inner world of his characters against a lyric description of the harsh, alien geography in which they found themselves.
Smilansky published his first novella in 1938. His first collection of short stories, "The Wood on the Hill," published in 1948, won Israel's Ruppin prize for literature.
He won the Israel Prize for Literature in 1959 at only 43, making him one of the youngest recipients of the award, for his massive work "Days of Ziklag," an epic novel comprising two volumes and more than 1,000 pages. The book told of the anguish felt by soldiers during a week-long attempt to take an enemy stronghold in 1948. At the time, raising questions about the much-revered army was almost unheard of.
His 1992 novel, "Foretellings," returned to the earliest days of pioneer settlement, and reported primal, elementary sensitivity through the eyes of a child. The publication of the novel, after 30 years of silence, was a major literary event in Israel.
The author was seen as a great innovator in modern Hebrew literature.
"It's impossible to imitate Yizhar. He had his peculiar own style," Appelfeld said. "His writing characteristically combined high-level prose mixed with very simple Hebrew and his vocabulary was incredibly rich."
He is survived by his wife and three children. His funeral is scheduled for Tuesday. |
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