1937 -

Israeli writer and civil servant.

Eli Amir was born in Baghdad and immigrated to Israel in 1950 at the age of twelve. As part of the systematic absorption process of the great immigration waves of the 1950s, Amir was separated from his family and sent to be educated on a kibbutz. He later studied the Arabic language and literature and the history of the Middle East at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Following his studies he joined the Israeli civil service and served in various immigration absorption and educational capacities.

In 1984 Amir published his first novel, Scapegoat. Loosely based on his own life, the novel tells the bittersweet story of an Iraqi immigrant boy who is torn between the world he knew and loved in the old country and the new one he must adopt. The novel describes the clash between two different Jewish cultures - European and Middle Eastern - through the eyes of an innocent adolescent. Amir's novel brought back into national consciousness one of the most painful social conflicts in Israel's short history: an internal conflict that marked the beginning of the momentous social and cultural changes that shape Israeli society to this day. Scapegoat was an immediate success and established Amir as a promising writer and a keen critic of Israeli society.

Amir's second novel, Farewell Baghdad, is about the Jewish community in Baghdad on the eve of its mass immigration to Israel in the 1950s.

Bibliography

Shaked, Gershon, ed. Hebrew Writers: A General Directory. Israel: Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature, 1993. In Hebrew.

— YAROM PELEG

Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa. Copyright © 2004 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.