Orly Castel-Bloom (; born 1960, Tel Aviv) is an Israeli

author In legal discourse, an author is the creator of an original work that has been published, whether that work exists in written, graphic, visual, or recorded form. The act of creating such a work is referred to as authorship. Therefore, a sculpt ...

Biography

Orly Castel-Bloom was born in Northern

Tel Aviv Tel Aviv-Yafo ( or , ; ), sometimes rendered as Tel Aviv-Jaffa, and usually referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the Gush Dan metropolitan area of Israel. Located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline and with a popula ...

in 1960, to a family of French-speaking Egyptian Jews. Until the age of three, she had French nannies and spoke only French. She studied film at Tel Aviv University and theater at the Beit Zvi School for the Performing Arts in

Ramat Gan Ramat Gan (, ) is a city in the Tel Aviv District of Israel, located east of the municipality of Tel Aviv, and is part of the Gush Dan, Gush Dan metropolitan area. It is home to a Diamond Exchange District (one of the world's major diamond exch ...

. Castel-Bloom lives in Tel Aviv and has two children. She has lectured at the universities of

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher lear ...

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...

and

Oxford Oxford () is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and non-metropolitan district in Oxfordshire, England, of which it is the county town. The city is home to the University of Oxford, the List of oldest universities in continuou ...

and currently teaches creative writing at

Tel Aviv University Tel Aviv University (TAU) is a Public university, public research university in Tel Aviv, Israel. With over 30,000 students, it is the largest university in the country. Located in northwest Tel Aviv, the university is the center of teaching and ...

Literary career

Castel-Bloom's first collection of short stories, ''Not Far from the Center of Town'' (''Lo Rahok mi-Merkhaz ha-Ir'')'','' was published in 1987 by

Am Oved Am Oved ("A Working People") is an Israeli publishing house. History Am Oved was founded in 1942 by Berl Katznelson, who was its first editor in chief. It was created as an organ of the Histadrut, Israel's federation of Labor, with a goal of publ ...

. She is the author of 11 books, including collections of short fiction and novels. Her 1992

novel A novel is an extended work of narrative fiction usually written in prose and published as a book. The word derives from the for 'new', 'news', or 'short story (of something new)', itself from the , a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ...

''Dolly City'', has been included in the

UNESCO Collection of Representative Works The UNESCO Collection of Representative Works (or UNESCO Catalogue of Representative Works) was a UNESCO translation project that was active for about 57 years, from 1948 to about 2005. The project's purpose was to translate masterpieces of world ...

, and in 1999 she was named one of the fifty most influential women in Israel. ''Dolly City'' has been performed as a play in

. In ''Free Radicals (Radikalim Hofshiyim)'' published in 2000, Castel-Bloom stopped writing in the first-person. In ''Human Parts (Halakim Enoshiyim)'' published in 2002, she was the first Israeli novelist to address the subject of Palestinian

suicide bombings A suicide attack (also known by a wide variety of other names, see below) is a deliberate attack in which the perpetrators knowingly sacrifice their own lives as part of the attack. These attacks are a form of murder–suicide that is ofte ...

. Her anthology of short stories ''You Don't Argue with Rice'' (stories from 1987 to 2004), was published in 2004. Castel-Bloom has won the Prime Minister's award twice, the Tel Aviv award for fiction and was nominated for the Sapir Prize for Literature. Israeli literary critic Gershon Shaked called her a

postmodern Postmodernism encompasses a variety of artistic, cultural, and philosophical movements that claim to mark a break from modernism. They have in common the conviction that it is no longer possible to rely upon previous ways of depicting the wo ...

writer who "communicates the despair of a generation which no longer even dreams the dreams of Zionist history."

Bibliography

Novels

* ''Heykan ʾaniy nimṣeʾt'' (1990). ''Where I Am'' * ''Doliy siyṭiy'' (1992). ''Dolly City'', trans. Dalya Bilu (Loki Books, 1997; Dalkey Archive, 2010) * ''HaMiynah Liyzah'' (1995). ''Mina Lisa'' * ''Ha-Sefer he-hadash'' (1998). ''Taking the Trend'' * ''Ḥalaqiym ʾenwṣiyyim'' (2002). ''Human Parts'', trans. Dalya Bilu (Godine, 2003) * ''Teqsṭiyl'' (2006). ''Textile'', trans. Dalya Bilu (The Feminist Press, 2013) * ''HaRoman HaMistri'' (2015). ''An Egyptian Novel'', trans. Todd Hasak-Lowy (Dalkey Archive, 2017)

Short story collections

* ''Lo Rahok mi-Merkhaz ha-Ir'' (1987). ''Not Far from the Center of Town'' * ''Sevivah 'oyenet'' (1989). ''Hostile Surroundings'' * ''Sipurim bilti-retsoniyim'' (1993). ''Unbidden Stories'' * ''Radikalem hofshi'im'' (2000). ''Free Radicals'' * ''Im orez lo mitvakchim'' (2004). ''You Don't Argue with Rice''

Awards and honors

Castel-Bloom won the

Prime Minister's Prize for Hebrew Literary Works A prime number (or a prime) is a natural number greater than 1 that is not a product of two smaller natural numbers. A natural number greater than 1 that is not prime is called a composite number. For example, 5 is prime because the only ways ...

in both 2001 and 2011, and the prestigious Sapir Prize for Literature for ''An Egyptian Novel'' in 2015.

References

External links

Orly Castel-Bloom bio
via ithl.org {{DEFAULTSORT:Castel-Bloom, Orly 1960 births Living people Jewish women writers Jewish Israeli writers Israeli women short story writers Israeli women novelists 20th-century Israeli women writers 21st-century Israeli women writers Writers from Tel Aviv Israeli people of Egyptian-Jewish descent Tel Aviv University alumni Academic staff of Tel Aviv University Recipients of Prime Minister's Prize for Hebrew Literary Works