From a Washington Post obit by Emily Langer headlined “Meir Shalev, preeminent Isreali writer, dies at 74”:

Meir Shalev, whose widely translated works of fiction, nonfiction, memoir and children’s literature established him as one of Israel’s most celebrated writers, a piquant observer who captured his country’s history without becoming mired in its politics, died at his home in the northern village of Alonei Abba.

Mr. Shalev was born in 1948, the year Israel became a state, and emerged as one of the nation’s most prominent men of letters, compared at times to A.B. Yehoshua, Amos Oz, Aharon Appelfeld and David Grossman.