Ora Shem-Ur

Ora Shem-Ur (born 1921 in Chortkiv, then in Poland, came on aliya to Mandatory Palestine, becoming a journalist, novelist, and public intellectual who is best remembered as one of the early women writers of Israeli detective fiction, died in 1995). Her principal contribution to crime fiction was her series featuring the female private investigator Ali (Aliya/“Ali”) Honigsberg. Literary scholars regard the series as one of the foundational works of the “new wave” of Israeli detective fiction that emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Ali’s gender was exceptional in Hebrew crime fiction of the time. Shem-Ur’s novels used criminal investigations to explore Israeli social and political issues, including corruption, power relations, gender, and class, and. helped establish women writers as leading figures in the development of modern Israeli crime fiction. Although less well-known than Batya Gur or Shulamit Lapid, she was an important pioneer of the genre in Israel. The main novels of the series are:

1. רצח בקצב כרמל (Murder to a Carmel Rhythm) (1990)
2. קונצ’רטו לאקדח ולתזמורת (Concerto for a Pistol and Orchestra) (1991)
3. מותה של דודה עליזה (The Death of Aunt Aliza) (1992)

Unfortunately, none of them have been translated into English. Outside crime fiction, Shem-Ur wrote journalism and nonfiction, including political and historical works such as Israel: The Challenge of Survival (1978). [ChatGPT]