Batya Gur

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Batya Gur in 2003

Batya Gur (Hebrew: בתיה גור‎, b.1 September 1947 - d.19 May 2005) was an Israeli writer. Her specialty was detective fiction.

Biography

Batya Gur was born in Tel Aviv in 1947 to parents who survived the Holocaust. She earned a master's degree in Hebrew literature from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Batya lived in Greensboro, NC, from 1972-75, where she taught Hebrew and Jewish studies to elementary students at the North Carolina Hebrew Academy at Greensboro (now called B'nai Shalom Day School). Before writing her first detective novel at the age of 39, she taught literature in high school. Gur was also a literary critic for Haaretz newspaper. She died of cancer at the age of 57.[1]

Literary career

In 1988 she began writing a series starring the character of police detective Michael Ohayon: an educated, pensive, and intellectual detective. Five sequels ensued. The first book was adapted as a film for Israeli television. In every book in the series Michael Ohayon enters a closed world, an isolated society, with rules of its own (for example psychoanalysts, or members of a kibbutz). By his fundamental approach and his inner understanding of human nature, Ohayon succeeds in breaking the ring of silence and solving the murder mystery on his way to the next book.

Critical acclaim

Gur's crime novels were described as "less about the death of the body than...sustained, thoughtful explorations of the life of the mind." [2]

Books in English translation

[3]

Books in Hebrew

  • 1990 Next to the Hunger Road (essays)
  • 1994 I Didn't Imagine it Would Be This Way
  • 1998 Stone for Stone
  • 1999 A Spy in the House
  • 2000 Requiem for Humility or Living in Jerusalem

References

  1. ↑ New York Times obituary
  2. ↑ New York Times obituary
  3. ↑ "Batya Gur". The Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature. Retrieved 6 December 2010. 
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