Mifal HaPais awarded the 2025 Sapir Prize for Literature on Monday night in Jerusalem to Amir Harash for his novel Bereavement and Failure and Zombies.
Harash received the top honor at a ceremony held at the National Library of Israel, which hosted the prize event as part of celebrations marking 25 years since the award’s founding.
In the debut category, Roni Partchek won the “book of the year” first-novel prize for Sitara, published by Gamma-Tangier.
Mifal HaPais said the main prize winner would receive NIS 180,000, and the winning book would be translated into Arabic and an additional foreign language. The debut prize carried NIS 75,000, with the other finalists in that track receiving grants as well.
The evening combined the formal award ceremony with a broader program titled “Between the Lines,” inviting guests to move through library spaces for performances, guided exhibition tours, and displays of rare manuscripts. The main ceremony ran later in the evening at the library auditorium.
The event was hosted by singer and actress Ester Rada and included musical performances during the program.
Harash’s novel draws on themes of grief and the lived Israeli experience
According to the judging committee’s statement released by Mifal HaPais, Harash’s winning novel drew on themes of grief and the lived Israeli experience, while also engaging the legacy of early Hebrew literature. The committee cited the book’s dialogue with the work of Yosef Haim Brenner and the way it connects past and present in contemporary Israel.
For the debut award, the judges described Sitara as an intense novel set in 1970s India during the Emergency period, portraying repression of civil liberties and political upheaval through a distinct cultural and religious setting far from the typical landscape of contemporary Hebrew fiction.
The National Library’s event page listed the five nominees for the main prize as Alon Arad, Ilana Bernstein, Ofir Touché Gafla, Harash, and Anat Einhar.
The Sapir Prize, presented by Mifal HaPais and named for Pinhas Sapir, has been awarded annually since 2000 and is widely viewed as one of the country’s best-known literary honors. In recent years, the award has paired its cash grant with support for translation and distribution, including the purchase of copies for public libraries.
Last year’s main prize went to Yossi Avni-Levy for Three Days in Summer.