Ури Орлев: Жизнь и творчество писателя

Polish Israeli children's writer and translator (1931–2022)

Uri Orlev (; 24 February 1931 – 26 July 2022) born Jerzy Henryk Orłowski, was a Polish born Israeli children's author and translator. He received the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1996 for his "lasting contribution to children's literature", the Prime Minister's Prize for Hebrew Literary Works in 1972 and the Bialik Prize for literature in 2006.

Uri Orlev was born in 1931 in Warsaw, Poland, the son of a physician. During World War II, his father was taken captive by the Russians and he lived with his mother in the Warsaw Ghetto until she was killed by the Nazis. A relative hid him and his brother in the ghetto until he was caught by the Germans and deported to the Bergen Belsen concentration camp in 1943. As a prisoner in Bergen Belsen, he wrote and recited poetry which would later be published by Yad Vashem in 2005. He survived the Holocaust and was liberated by the British Army in 1945. He and his brother emigrated to Israel and were placed in kibbutz Ginegar. They were joined by their father in 1954. After finishing high school on the kibbutz, Orlev served in the Israel Defense Forces as an infantryman. Upon completing his regular military service, Orlev returned to the kibbutz and began working in the cowsheds. He continued to serve as a reservist and subsequently fought in the Suez Crisis, Six Day War, and Yom Kippur War. One of his sons, Itamar Orlev, is also a writer and made his debut with the novel Bandit in 2015. He died on 26 July 2022.

The biennial Hans Christian Andersen Award conferred by the International Board on Books for Young People is the highest recognition available to a writer or illustrator of children's books. Orlev received the writing award in 1996. In the U. S., four books by Orlev have won the Batchelder Award in English language translations by Hillel Halkin published by Houghton Mifflin. The annual American Library Association award recognizes the "children's book considered to be the most outstanding of those books originally published in a foreign language in a foreign country, and subsequently translated into English and published in the United States". The four American titles were The Island on Bird Street, The Man from the Other Side, The Lady with the Hat, and Run, Boy, Run, published from 1984 to 2003 by Houghton Mifflin, eventually by its Walter Lorraine Books imprint.