Remembering Aharon Appelfeld, One of Israel’s Most Distinguished Novelists

Aharon Appelfeld—the author of 47 books, including numerous novels—died yesterday at the age of eighty-five. Born in the Romanian city of Czernowitz (now Chernivtsi, Ukraine), Appelfeld survived World War II as a child in hiding—an experience that informed much of his fiction. He came to Israel in 1946, where he first began to learn Hebrew, the only language in which he would write; his final novel was published in September. Unlike Israel’s other literary giants, Appelfeld steered clear of politics in both his writings and his public pronouncements. In 1983, Ruth Wisse appraised his work up to that point: