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Orly Castel-Bloom was born in Tel Aviv in 1960 to parents originally from Egypt. After studying film at the Beit Zvi Institute and Tel Aviv University, she published her first collection of stories in 1987 and has been a leading voice in Hebrew literature ever since, constantly expanding the boundaries of the Hebrew language as well as of narrative style. Castel-Bloom has lectured at Harvard University, UCLA, UC Berkeley, New York University as well as at Oxford and Cambridge Universities; at present she teaches creative writing at Tel Aviv University. She has published novels, collections of short stories, and a book for children. Her postmodern classic, Dolly City, has been included in UNESCO's Collection of Representative Works, and was nominated in 2007 one of the ten most important books since the creation of the State of Israel. In 2013, it was also listed by Tablet Magazine as one of the 101 Great Jewish Books in English translation.

Castel-Bloom has received the Tel Aviv Foundation Award (1990), the Alterman Prize for Innovation (1993), the Prime Minister's Prize three times (1994; 2001; 2011), the Neuman Prize (2003), the French WIZO Prize for Human Parts (2005), the Lea Goldberg Prize (2007) and the Rishon LeZion Prize for Creativity in Hebrew Language (2016). Her last book, An Egyptian Novel, was awarded the Sapir Prize (2015). Castel-Bloom's books have been published in 14 languages.

"The greatest Israeli fiction writer of her time."—Haaretz