Three people from different literary fields will share this year's Israel Prize in literature: author Ida Fink (86) of Holon; poet Tuvia Rivner (84) of Kibbutz Merhavia; and translator Nili Mirsky (63) of Tel Aviv.
Fink was born in Poland and survived the Holocaust after escaping from the Zbaraz ghetto in 1942. She immigrated to Israel in 1957, but only began publishing in 1971. Her most famous works are "A Scrap of Time and Other Stories" and "The Journey". She is the subject of a documentary "The Garden that Floated Away".
Rivner was born in Czechoslovakia and immigrated to Israel in 1941. His family perished in the Holocaust. His most recent anthology of poems is "Akevot Yamim" (Steps of Time).
Mirsky was born and raised on King George Street in Tel Aviv, in the same building where she still resides. She graduated from the Department of Literature at Tel Aviv University. Her husband has a Ph.D. in Russian and German Literature from the University of Munich. Her translations include Thomas Mann's "A Death in Venice" and "Buddenbrooks"; and Leo Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina", Feodor Dostoevsky's "The Idiot" and "The Gambler", and works by Maxim Gogol, Nikolai Gogol, Vladimir Nabakov, Ivan Turgenov, Isaac Babel, Anton Chekov, and others. She also edits the "People's Library" series for Am Oved Publishers.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on February 28, 2008
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