About Raphaël Jerusalmy
From intelligence officer to award-winning novelist
Biography
Raphaël Jerusalmy is a French-Israeli writer.
Of Sephardic origin through his paternal grandmother, whose family members were for the most part exterminated at Auschwitz, he is also of Russian Ashkenazi heritage on his father’s side—an antiques dealer, craftsman, and bookbinder-gilder. After attending khâgne at Lycée Henri IV at age fifteen, he entered the École Normale Supérieure for Technical Education and the Sorbonne.
After his studies, he enlisted in the Israeli army, where he quickly moved into the intelligence service. Serving as a liaison officer—especially in Latin America—he met Augusto Pinochet and Yasser Arafat. After about fifteen years, he retired from the army and carried out educational and humanitarian work, then became a dealer in rare books in Tel Aviv. He is also a commentator on the I24news television channel.
He published his first highly acclaimed novel in 2012, “Sauvez Mozart,” for which he received the 2013 Emmanuel Roblès Prize and the ENS Cachan Literary Prize. The author of best-selling novels such as “La confrérie des chasseurs de livres” (Actes Sud, 2013) and “Denis Diderot, non à l’ignorance” (Actes Sud junior, 2014), his novel “Les obus jouaient à pigeon vole,” released in February 2016 in the Sur le fil collection by Éditions Bruno Doucey, was awarded the Readers’ Choice Prize at the Rendez-vous de l’histoire de Blois 2016. He won the 2017 Amerigo-Vespucci Prize for “Évacuation” (Actes Sud).
In 2018, he released “La rose de Saragosse,” a thrilling novel in which he revisits the persecution of Spain’s Jews by the Inquisition in the 15th century.
Of Sephardic origin through his paternal grandmother, whose family members were for the most part exterminated at Auschwitz, he is also of Russian Ashkenazi heritage on his father’s side—an antiques dealer, craftsman, and bookbinder-gilder. After attending khâgne at Lycée Henri IV at age fifteen, he entered the École Normale Supérieure for Technical Education and the Sorbonne.
After his studies, he enlisted in the Israeli army, where he quickly moved into the intelligence service. Serving as a liaison officer—especially in Latin America—he met Augusto Pinochet and Yasser Arafat. After about fifteen years, he retired from the army and carried out educational and humanitarian work, then became a dealer in rare books in Tel Aviv. He is also a commentator on the I24news television channel.
He published his first highly acclaimed novel in 2012, “Sauvez Mozart,” for which he received the 2013 Emmanuel Roblès Prize and the ENS Cachan Literary Prize. The author of best-selling novels such as “La confrérie des chasseurs de livres” (Actes Sud, 2013) and “Denis Diderot, non à l’ignorance” (Actes Sud junior, 2014), his novel “Les obus jouaient à pigeon vole,” released in February 2016 in the Sur le fil collection by Éditions Bruno Doucey, was awarded the Readers’ Choice Prize at the Rendez-vous de l’histoire de Blois 2016. He won the 2017 Amerigo-Vespucci Prize for “Évacuation” (Actes Sud).
In 2018, he released “La rose de Saragosse,” a thrilling novel in which he revisits the persecution of Spain’s Jews by the Inquisition in the 15th century.