Samir Naqqash

Samir Naqqash was born in 1938 in Baghdad

Naqqash was born in 1938 in the Jewish quarter of Baghdad, the eldest of 6 children. His father owned a spare parts business and his mother was a midwife. He began school at 4 and started writing at 6.

In 1951 his family came to Israel in Operation Ezra and Nehemiah and lived in a transit camp in Petah Tikva. After his father died, he left Israel and lived in Turkey, Iran, Lebanon, Egypt, India and the United Kingdom from 1958 to 1962. He then returned and worked in various jobs.

In the 1970s he studied Arabic and Persian literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and completed an MA in 1978. He wrote novels, stories and plays in literary Arabic and in the Baghdad Jewish Arabic dialect. He won the Prime Minister's Award for Arabic literature and translated Sami Michael's novel Victoria into Arabic.

He described himself as an Iraqi in exile and kept writing only in Arabic. He lived most of his life in the Amishav neighborhood of Petah Tikva. He died on 6 July 2004 and was buried in the Segula cemetery, leaving a wife, a daughter and 2 sons.