literary vehicle for its succinctness and biblical imagery. Appelfeld purchased his first Hebrew book at the age of 25: King of Flesh and Blood by Moshe Shamir. In an interview with the newspaper Haaretz, he said he agonized over it, because it was written in Mishnaic Hebrew and he had to look up every word in the dictionary. In an interview in the Boston Review, Appelfeld explained his choice of Hebrew: "I’m lucky that I’m writing in Hebrew. Hebrew is a very precise language, you have to be very precise–no over-saying. This is because of our Bible tradition. In the Bible tradition you have very small sentences, very concise and autonomic. Every sentence, in itself, has to have its own meaning." The Holocaust as a literary theme Many Holocaust survivors have written an autobiographical account of their survival, but Appelfeld does not offer a realistic depiction of the events. He writes short stories that can be interpreted in a metaphoric way. Instead of his personal experience, he sometimes evokes the Holocaust without even relating to it directly. His style is clear and precise, but also very modernistic. Appelfeld resided in Israel but wrote little about life there. Most of his work focuses on Jewish life in Europe before, during and after World War II. As an orphan from a young age, the search for a mother figure is central to his work. During the Holocaust he was separated from his father, and only met him again 20 years later. Motifs Silence, muteness and stuttering are motifs that run through much of Appelfeld's work. Disability becomes a source of strength and power. Philip Roth described Appelfeld as "a displaced writer of displaced fiction, who has made of displacement and disorientation a subject uniquely his own." Awards and honors 1975 Brenner Prize for literature. 1979 Bialik Prize for literature (jointly with Avot Yeshurun). 1983 Israel Prize for literature. 1989 National Jewish Book Award for Fiction for Badenheim 1939 ( ), 1989 National Jewish Book Award for Fiction for The Immortal Bartfuss 1997 Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 1998 National Jewish Book Award for Fiction for The Iron Tracks 2004 Prix Médicis (foreign works category) for his autobiography, The Story of a Life: A Memoir (2003, ) 2011 National Jewish Book Award for Fiction for Until the Dawn’s Light 2012 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for Blooms of