The Death of Uri Peled: A war novel, written from the eyes of a soldier
Shammai Golan, Alona Frankel, Reuven Ben-Yosef
language
(Astrolog Publishing House, Oct. 6, 2016)
Uri, a refugee from Eastern Europe, hoped for a normal life in Israel. But neither his marriage to an Israeli woman nor his career in the army make an Israeli of him. After commanding a reserve company in the battle for Jerusalem in 1967, Uri finds work at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum, filing testimonies about the life and death of his lost community. He is haunted by eerie and vivid memories of the ghetto and jolted by every shift of consciousness. āThey deployed in the pine grove. The shells were passing overhead now and exploding far off. He heard the colonelās voice on the communications set: Green light! Green light! And the assault began. He ordered the demolition team to advance, and once the fence was blasted he made a run for the objective. It seemed the trench would lead him straight to the end of the war. In his mindās eye he saw its walls cupping his body which shrank from the machine-gun bursts that encompassed him in pillars of smoke and fragments of rock. āForward!ā he cried as if commanding himself, and he swept on and never looked backāāThe authorās great achievement lies in arousing our sympathies for this almost dehumanized man who is ultimately seen in a tragic light.ā ā Critic Reuven Ben-Yosef āWe thought it appropriate to award Shammai Golan this Prize for writing about the war out of personal perspective, and managed to make a personal and private experience to deep public impression.ā ā Prize for literary excellence, Ramat GanShammai Golan was born in Poland in 1933. He spent World War II under Nazi occupation and in Siberia. After the death of his parents, he was placed in an orphanage and immigrated illegally to Israel in 1947. Golan studied literature and history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Later, he taught literature, and served as cultural attache in Mexico and Moscow. Shammai Golan was also chairman of the Hebrew Writers' Association.Golan published four novels, three collections of short stories, two books for youth, a collection of essays and the anthology āThe Holocaustā. His work has been adapted for radio and produced on stage.Shammai Golan has been awarded: Barash Literature Prize (1962);The ACUM Prize for Literature (1965);Ramat Gan Prize for literary excellence (1973); AgnonPrize, Jerusalem (1976);Walenrod Prize, (1979);Tel Aviv Foundation Award (1982);Prime Minister`s Prize (1992);Laureate of Light (Khattan Haor), Zionist Council, Israel, Jerusalem (2006); Cheno Prize Mexico and the Zionist Federation Award (2006);Laureate of the Hebrew Writers Association (2010);Award of Honour, ACUM, (2010);Laureate of the City of Tel-Aviv-Yaffa (2014).