Yoel Hoffman

Born in Braşov, Romania, to Jewish parents of Austro-Hungarian culture, at the age of one, Hoffmann and his parents fled a Europe increasingly under the Nazi influence for the British Mandate of Palestine. Shortly after the move, Hoffmann's mother died, and he was entrusted by his father to an orphanage where he spent his time until his father remarried.

As a young man, Hoffmann left his home in Israel and traveled to Japan, where he spent two years living in a Zen monastery and studying Chinese and Japanese texts with monks. He would later return to Japan to earn his doctorate. Hoffmann did not begin writing fiction until in his forties, and though chronologically a member of the sixties "Generation of the State," his work is oft-described as being on the forefront of avant-garde Hebrew literature, with an influence of his Japanese studies discernible in his works.

Hoffmann's first book of fiction, Kätzchen - The Book of Joseph, was published in Hebrew in 1988. He has since gone on to write ten more books in Hebrew, seven of which have been translated into English and published by New Directions; these seven are Kitchen and The Book of Joseph (1998), Bernhard (1998), The Christ of Fish (1999), The Heart is Katmandu (2001), The Shunra and the Schmetterling (2004), Curriculum Vitae (2009), and Moods (2015). 

Hoffmann was awarded the first ever Koret Jewish Book Award, as well as the Bialik Prize by the city of Tel Aviv and the Prime Minister's Prize. The rights to Hoffmann's latest book, Moods, were sold to Galaade publishing company in France and to Keter Books in Israel in 2010.