Yishai Sarid

(b. 1965) – an Israeli writer, the winner of prestigious awards, e.g. Grand prix de littérature policière, shortlisted for the Pinchas Sapir Literary Prize. The author of detective books, sensational novels and thrillers with a plot located in contemporary Israel. Yishai is the son of Yossi Sarid – a poet and one of the most important Israeli left-wing activists, a long-year member of the Knesset. He studied law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Before that, he had served military service and had been an intelligence officer. His prose brings a picture of the gloomy and often brutal political reality of Israel, where protagonists – lawyers, soldiers, secret service agents – are entangled in complex intrigues in which they have to choose between service and their own happiness and conscience. Nothing in the reality presented by Sarid is black or white, and the world of secret services is ruthless. In his best-known novel Limassol (2009), which was translated into Polish in 2015, the protagonist is an anonymous officer of the Israeli Security Service entrusted with the task of reaching a female writer and activist of the peace movement potentially linked to a dangerous terrorist under the guise of participation in creative writing courses. The mission turns out to be the beginning of the agent's personal drama.