Hilu, Alon 1972-

PERSONAL:

Born June 21, 1972, in Jaffa, Israel. Education: Graduated from Tel Aviv University; also holds a degree in law.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Tel Aviv, Israel.

CAREER:

Novelist and lawyer. Radvision, Ltd., Tel Aviv, Israel, legal counsel.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Sapir Award nomination, 2005, and Israeli Presidential Prize for Literature, 2006, both for Death of a Monk.

WRITINGS:

Mot ha-nazir, Xargol (Tel Aviv, Israel), 2004, translation by Evan Fallenberg published as Death of a Monk, Harvill Secker (London, England), 2006.

Also author of the plays The Wedding and The Day of the Dogs, produced in Israeli theater festivals. Contributor of radio plays to Israeli Radio, 1987-88. Contributor of short stories to Israeli literary magazines. Mot ha-nazir has been translated into French, Italian, and Greek.

SIDELIGHTS:

Alon Hilu is an Israeli novelist whose first published title, Mot ha-nazir, earned him the 2006 Presidential Prize for Literature and a nomination for the 2005 Sapir Award. Translated into English as Death of a Monk, the story is a fictionalization of an 1840 event in Damascus, Syria, in which a number of Jews were forced to confess under torture to the murder of a monk. Hilu's novel proposes that the monk died naturally in the arms of his lover, the son of a prominent Jewish leader. The son is subsequently charged with murdering the Christian for ritualistic purposes and sees the men in his family accused alongside him. Moris Farhi, writing for the London Independent, commented that Hilu "writes with great panache." Edinburgh Scotsman contributor Daneet Steffens remarked that "in Hilu's imaginative retelling, not everyone is who they seem to be. Hilu has taken a piece of history and cast it in another light, told through eyes of a young man brimming with a life that must be suppressed, who is betrayed and betrays in turn." In an review for the Guardian Unlimited, Rachel Hore noted the novel's "amiable tone and colourful background."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

ONLINE

Edinburgh Scotsman Online,http://www.scotsman.com/ (August 27, 2006), Daneet Steffens, review of Death of a Monk.

Guardian Unlimited,http://www.guardian.co.uk/ (September 30, 2006), Rachel Hore, review of Death of a Monk.

London Independent Online,http://www.independent.co.uk/ (September 22, 2006), Moris Farhi, review of Death of a Monk.