Batya Gur

Batya Gur was born in 1947 in Tel Aviv

Batya Gur was born Batya Mann in Tel Aviv in 1947 to parents who survived the Holocaust. She grew up in Ramat Gan and returned to Tel Aviv for high school.

During her army service she was a soldier teacher in Ofakim. She then studied literature and history at university and earned a teaching certificate. She later completed a master's degree in literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, with a thesis on the poetry of Natan Zach.

She married psychologist Amos Gur, and they had 3 children. From 1971 to 1975 she lived in Greensboro, North Carolina, where she taught Hebrew and Jewish studies. Back in Israel she taught literature for many years at the Hebrew University Secondary School.

Her first novel, The Saturday Morning Murder, came out in 1988 and opened the Michael Ohayon series, which had 5 more books. In each book the detective enters a closed group with its own rules, such as psychoanalysts, academics or a kibbutz. She was also a critic and essayist for Haaretz and received the Prime Minister's Prize in 1994.

She lived most of her life in Jerusalem and in her last years lived with critic Ariel Hirschfeld. In 2003 she was arrested after arguing with Border Police officers who had detained an elderly Palestinian man. She died of lung cancer in Jerusalem in 2005 and was buried at Har HaMenuchot.