Aharon Appelfeld is the author of more than forty works of fic­tion and non­fic­tion, includ­ing The Iron Tracks, Until the Dawn’s Light (both win­ners of the Nation­al Jew­ish Book Award), The Sto­ry of a Life (win­ner of the Prix Médi­cis Étranger), and Baden­heim 1939. Oth­er hon­ors he has received include the Gio­van­ni Boc­cac­cio Lit­er­ary Prize, the Nel­ly Sachs Prize, the Israel Prize, the Bia­lik Prize, and the MLA Com­mon­wealth Award. Blooms of Dark­ness won the Inde­pen­dent For­eign Fic­tion Prize in 2012 and was short-list­ed for the Man Book­er Inter­na­tion­al Prize in 2013. Born in Czer­nowitz, Bukov­ina (now part of Ukraine), in 1932, Appele­feld died in Israel in 2018.