Nathan Shaham (Hebrew: נתן שחם; January 29, 1925 – June 18, 2018) was an Israeli writer.

Biography

Born in Tel Aviv, Shaham was a member of Kibbutz Beit Alfa from 1945-2018, and served with the Palmach in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. He was the son of Eliezer Steinman, the Hebrew author and essayist. Shaham was editor-in-chief of Sifriat Poalim Publishing House. He was Israel's cultural attaché in the United States from 1977–80, and a former vice-chairman of the Israel Broadcasting Authority. He died in his home in Beit Alfa on June 18, 2018.

Awards

Shaham was the winner of several literary awards, including the Bialik Prize (1988), the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction for Rosendorf Quartet (1992), the Newman Prize (1993), the ADAI-WIZO Prize for The Rosendorf Quartet (Italy, 2005), and the Prime Minister's Prize (2007). In 2012, he won the Israel Prize for Hebrew Literature and Poetry; the prize jury called Shaham one of the outstanding authors of Israel’s generation of founders and noted the “lively and rich” style of his plays, fiction and nonfiction works.

Works