Aharon Amir

Aharon Amir (1923-2008) was born in Lithuania and grew up in Tel Aviv. He studied Arabic language and literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem during the British Mandate. During this time, he was a member of the anti-British underground . Most notably, he was a founding member of the Canaanite movement, which saw Hebrew or Israeli culture as defined by geographical location rather than by religious affiliation. Amir translated widely from English and French into Hebrew, including the work of Melville, Dickens, Lewis Carroll, Camus, Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf, Winston Churchill and de Gaulle. He founded and edited the literary magazine Keshet, which he closed in 1976 after 18 years of publication, to concentrate on his own writing. He was awarded the Prime Minister`s Prize in 2005.