{{Short description|Israeli writer (1947–2005)}} {{Infobox writer | name = Batya Gur | native_name = בתיה גור | native_name_lang = Hebrew | image = Batya Gur 2003.jpg | caption = Gur in 2003 | image_size = | birth_date = {{birth date|1947|9|1|df=y}} | birth_place = Tel Aviv, Israel | death_date = {{death date and age|2005|5|19|1947|9|1|df=y}} | death_place = Jerusalem, Israel | occupation = {{hlist|Novelist|literary critic}} | children = | parents = | genre = Crime fiction | years_active = 1988–2005 | website = }} '''Batya Gur''' ({{langx|he|בתיה גור}}{{lrm}}; 1 September 1947 – 19 May 2005) was an Israeli novelist. Her specialty was detective fiction. She was a 1994 recipient of the Prime Minister's Prize for Hebrew Literary Works.
==Biography== Batya Gur was born in Tel Aviv in 1947 to parents who survived the Holocaust. She earned a master's degree in Hebrew literature from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Between 1971 and 1975 Batya lived in Greensboro, NC, where she taught Hebrew and Jewish studies to elementary students at the North Carolina Hebrew Academy at Greensboro (now called B'nai Shalom Day School). Before writing her first detective novel at the age of 39, she taught literature at the Hebrew University Secondary School. Gur was also a literary critic for ''Haaretz'' newspaper.
==Literary career== In 1988 she began writing a series starring the character of police detective Michael Ohayon: an educated, pensive, and intellectual detective. Five sequels ensued. The first book was adapted as a film for Israeli television. In every book in the series Michael Ohayon enters a closed world, an isolated society, with rules of its own (for example psychoanalysts, literary scholars in academia, or members of a kibbutz). By his fundamental approach and his inner understanding of human nature, Ohayon succeeds in breaking the ring of silence and solving the murder mystery on his way to the next book.
==Critical acclaim== Gur's crime novels were described as "less about the death of the body than...sustained, thoughtful explorations of the life of the mind."<ref>[https://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/30/obituaries/30gur.html? New York Times obituary]</ref>
==Death== On 19 May 2005, Gur died of lung cancer in Jerusalem at the age of 57.<ref>[https://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/30/obituaries/30gur.html? New York Times obituary]</ref> She was buried at Har HaMenuchot.
== Published works== ===In English translation===
*1992 ''The Saturday morning murder: a psychoanalytic case'' ({{ISBN|9780060190248}}) *1993 ''Literary murder: a critical case'' ({{ISBN|9780060190231}}) *1994 ''Murder on a kibbutz: a communal case'' ({{ISBN|9780060190262}})<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.theatlasphere.com/columns/031117_cohen_literarymurder.php|title=Literary Murder: A Critical Case - The Atlasphere|last=Fram Cohen|first=Michal|website=www.theatlasphere.com|language=English|access-date=2019-04-04}}</ref> *2000 ''Murder duet: a musical case'' ({{ISBN|9780060932985}}) *2004 ''Bethlehem Road murder: A Michael Ohayon mystery'' ({{ISBN|9780060195731}}) *2006 ''Murder in Jerusalem: A Michael Ohayon mystery'' ({{ISBN|9780060852948}}) <ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.ithl.org.il/author_info.asp?id=105 |title=Batya Gur |publisher=The Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature |accessdate=6 December 2010 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20100902215821/http://www.ithl.org.il/author_info.asp?id=105 |archivedate=2 September 2010 }}</ref>
===In Hebrew=== *1990 ''Next to the Hunger Road (essays)'' *1994 ''I Didn't Imagine it Would Be This Way'' *1998 ''Stone for Stone'' *1999 ''A Spy in the House'' *2000 ''Requiem for Humility or Living in Jerusalem''
==See also== *Women of Israel
== References == {{reflist}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gur, Batya}} Category:1947 births Category:2005 deaths Category:Writers from Tel Aviv Category:Academic staff of the Open University of Israel Category:Hebrew University of Jerusalem alumni Category:Israeli women literary critics Category:Israeli literary critics Category:Israeli women novelists Category:Israeli women essayists Category:Israeli crime fiction writers Category:Israeli mystery writers Category:Crime novelists Category:Crime fiction writers Category:Jewish Israeli novelists Category:Jewish women novelists Category:Women mystery writers Category:Haaretz people Category:Recipients of Prime Minister's Prize for Hebrew Literary Works Category:Deaths from lung cancer in Israel Category:Burials at Har HaMenuchot Category:20th-century Israeli women writers Category:21st-century Israeli women writers Category:20th-century Israeli novelists Category:21st-century Israeli novelists Category:20th-century Israeli essayists Category:21st-century Israeli essayists Category:20th-century Israeli Jews Category:21st-century Israeli Jews Category:Tichon Hadash High School (Tel Aviv) alumni