Uri Adelman (; September 3, 1958 – August 5, 2004) was an Israeli writer, musician, composer, computer expert, and professor 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 ...

Biography

Adelman was born and raised 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 ...

, near

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 ...

, the 8th generation of a German-Jewish family hailing from

Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...

. Adelman used the

TAU Tau (; uppercase Τ, lowercase τ or \boldsymbol\tau; ) is the nineteenth letter of the Greek alphabet, representing the voiceless alveolar plosive, voiceless dental or alveolar plosive . In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 300 ...

's musicology department where he worked as a setting for his first

thriller Thriller may refer to: * Thriller (genre), a broad genre of literature, film and television ** Thriller film, a film genre under the general thriller genre Comics * ''Thriller'' (DC Comics), a comic book series published 1983–84 by DC Comics i ...

novel, ''Concerto for Spy and Orchestra''. His second novel, ''Lost and Found'', was a

fantasy novel Fantasy literature is literature set in an imaginary universe, often but not always without any locations, events, or people from the real world. magic (paranormal), Magic, the supernatural and Legendary creature, magical creatures are common i ...

about

Ashkenazi Ashkenazi Jews ( ; also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim) form a distinct subgroup of the Jewish diaspora, that Ethnogenesis, emerged in the Holy Roman Empire around the end of the first millennium Common era, CE. They traditionally spe ...

moshavnik A moshav (, plural ', "settlement, village") is a type of Israeli village or town or Jewish settlement, in particular a type of cooperative agricultural community of individual farms pioneered by the Labour Zionists between 1904 and 191 ...

Mossad The Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations (), popularly known as Mossad ( , ), is the national intelligence agency of the Israel, State of Israel. It is one of the main entities in the Israeli Intelligence Community, along with M ...

agents, who alternated frequenting the

Jerusalem Cinematheque The Jerusalem Cinematheque is a cinematheque and film archive in Jerusalem. History The Jerusalem Cinematheque was founded in 1973 by Lia van Leer. It was originally located in Beit Agron in the center of Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city i ...

with flying secretly to Cyprus. Written using short chapters and clear, direct

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

, the novels were bestsellers in Israel, culminating in translations to German, Greek and Japanese. Critics in Israel praised ''Lost and Found'' as "the perfect Israeli thriller", and his writing has received favourable comparisons with

John Grisham John Ray Grisham Jr. (; born February 8, 1955) is an American novelist, lawyer, and former politician, known for his best-selling legal thrillers. According to the Academy of Achievement, American Academy of Achievement, Grisham has written 37 ...

. In addition to 4 novels, Adelman wrote computer textbooks for the general public. He died from a

heart attack A myocardial infarction (MI), commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when Ischemia, blood flow decreases or stops in one of the coronary arteries of the heart, causing infarction (tissue death) to the heart muscle. The most common symptom ...

in a hotel room in

Ramat Aviv Ramat Aviv Alef or Ramat Aviv HaYeruka, and originally plainly Ramat Aviv (, ''lit.'' Spring Heights), is a neighborhood in northwest Tel Aviv, Israel. History Ramat Aviv was founded in 1950s following the great influx of immigrants from Eastern ...

, Tel Aviv, where he was writing his next thriller.

Works

* ''Concerto for Spy and Orchestra'' (

: קונצ'רטו למרגל ולתזמורת) * ''Lost and Found'' (

: משוואה עם נעלם) * ''Tropic of Venus'' (

: בסימן ונוס) * ''The Graveyard Shift'' (

: שעות מתות)

References

External links

Bio at The Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature
1958 births 2004 deaths Israeli Ashkenazi Jews Israeli male novelists Israeli male non-fiction writers Israeli people of German-Jewish descent Thelma Yellin High School of Arts alumni Academic staff of Tel Aviv University Hebrew-language writers Jewish Israeli novelists Jewish Israeli non-fiction writers Jewish Israeli composers 20th-century Israeli male writers 21st-century Israeli male writers 20th-century Israeli male composers 21st-century Israeli male composers 20th-century Israeli non-fiction writers 21st-century Israeli non-fiction writers 20th-century Israeli novelists 21st-century Israeli novelists 20th-century Israeli Jews 21st-century Israeli Jews {{Israel-writer-stub