Nili Mirsky

Nili Mirsky was born in 1943 in Rehovot

Nili Mirsky was born in Rehovot in 1943 and grew up in Tel Aviv. Her grandfather owned a Russian-language bookstore on Allenby Street. She learned Russian by speaking it with her grandmother.

She began university studies in Jerusalem in 1962 and married Semyon Mirsky that year, so she was exempt from IDF service. She studied in Munich from 1964, then earned a bachelor's degree at Tel Aviv University in 1971. She returned to Munich to study Slavic studies and later received a master's degree there.

Her first translations appeared in the first issue of the magazine Siman Kri'a in 1972, and she later became one of its assistant editors. She taught Russian and German literature at Tel Aviv University from 1976 to 1979. In 1979 she left academia to translate and edit at Am Oved.

She later worked as a house translator for HaSifriya. In 1994 she returned to Am Oved and co-edited the series Sifriya La'am. At the end of 2011 she joined Ahuzat Bayit Publishing.

In her final years she worked on translating Kafka's The Castle. She died of cancer on January 30, 2018, and was buried in Yarkon Cemetery in Petah Tikva.