Reuven Kritz

Reuven Kritz was born in 1928 in Vienna

Reuven Kritz was born in Vienna in 1928. His father, Dr. Arie Kritz, was a physician born in Galicia. In 1938 he moved to the Land of Israel with his father.

He grew up as an outside child at Kibbutz Mizra, where he finished high school. He studied at the Kibbutzim Seminary and then at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he earned a doctorate in comparative literature.

From 1951 to 1956 he taught at Mizra. In 1956 he moved to Moshav Moledet, opened a small publishing house and taught at several high schools. He lectured on Hebrew literature in the United States until 1976, then taught at the University of Haifa and Tel Aviv University.

He wrote realistic novels for youth about kibbutz life and comic novels about student life. He also published detective stories, poems and other books anonymously or under pen names, including Riki Keller. He translated The Garden of the Finzi-Continis by Giorgio Bassani into Hebrew.

From the mid-1990s he lived in Heidelberg and lectured mainly in Germany. A 1997 study of his work by Ruti Shamir was claimed by some to be another of his pen names. He died in 2020, and the 2023 film Monkey Garden by Avi Nesher is partly based on him.