Batya Gur was an Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

i writer. Her specialty was detective fiction

Detective fiction

Detective fiction is a sub-genre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator , either professional or amateur, investigates a crime, often murder.-In ancient literature:...

.

Biography

Batya Gur was born in Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv , officially Tel Aviv-Yafo , is the second most populous city in Israel, with a population of 404,400 on a land area of . The city is located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline in west-central Israel. It is the largest and most populous city in the metropolitan area of Gush Dan, with...

 in 1947 to parents who survived the Holocaust. She earned a master's degree in Hebrew literature

Hebrew literature

Hebrew literature consists of ancient, medieval, and modern writings in the Hebrew language. It is one of the primary forms of Jewish literature, though there have been cases of literature written in Hebrew by non-Jews...

 from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Hebrew University of Jerusalem

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem ; ; abbreviated HUJI) is Israel's second-oldest university, after the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. The Hebrew University has three campuses in Jerusalem and one in Rehovot. The world's largest Jewish studies library is located on its Edmond J...

. 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

Haaretz

Haaretz is Israel's oldest daily newspaper. It was founded in 1918 and is now published in both Hebrew and English in Berliner format. The English edition is published and sold together with the International Herald Tribune. Both Hebrew and English editions can be read on the Internet...

 newspaper. She died of cancer at the age of 57.

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

Kibbutz

A kibbutz is a collective community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economic branches, including industrial plants and high-tech enterprises. Kibbutzim began as utopian communities, a combination of socialism and Zionism...

). 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."

Books in Hebrew

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