The book ‘Moon’ by Dori Pinto won the Sapphire Prize today in the first book category for 2020, it was published today (Sunday). The win comes alongside celebrations of the 20th anniversary of the establishment of the Sapphire Prize on behalf of the Lottery.
The book “Moon” was selected from the “short list” of the first category, which also included the books “Group Theory” by Carmit Sahar and “Not as Published” by Yoav Shapir Biran. This is the second time that Mifal HaPais HaPais publishes a short list for the first book and the candidates on the list receive a grant of NIS 20,000 each.
Dori Pinto (Photo: PR)The jury justified its choice and said: “Moon” by Dori Pinto is a surprising and wonderfully mature debut book that weaves with an artist’s hand the lives of six people during one day in the summer of 1969, on one street in Jerusalem, while “Apollo 11” makes its way to the moon. The writer’s eye moves naturally from a telescopic lens of an overhead view to the microscopic proximity to the consciousness and the course of his characters’ day. The spatial axis is also accompanied by an impressive movement back and forth on the timeline. The book touches on life stories full of sadness and loss, but sketches them in very thin lines, without being tempted by the melodramatic potential, and reveals a rare understanding of the depths of the human psyche. Pinto makes up a mosaic of fragments of broken figures, and yet each of them is a world in its entirety, and is written with delicacy, sensitivity and human love.
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The chairman of Mifal Hapayis, CPA Avigdor Yitzhaki, congratulated the winner and said: “Mifal Hapayis is proud to lead the most important and prestigious project in the field of literature in Israel – the ‘Sapphire Prize for Literature’. And proudly lead this important institution whose whole purpose is to exalt the important contribution of Israeli writers to society. “In order to encourage writers at the beginning of their journey and thus also support the future writers of Israel.”