Adi Sorek (1970) is an Israeli writer and editor who lives in Tel-Aviv. she is the author of five fiction books, winner of the 2019 Levi Eshkol Prime Minister’s Award for Hebrew Authors. She is the writer of the books Written in Objects -- Dream Stories and Confessions (2024), Nathan (2018, nominated for the 2019 Sapir Prize), Sometimes You Lose People (2013, won the Goldberg Prize), Internal Tourism (2006), Spaces (2004) and Seven Matrons (2001, finalist of the the 1999 Moses Foundation Literary Award), published in Keter Press, Yediot Books Press and Resling Press.
She is also the founding and chief editor of the Vashti prose series at Resling Publishing (2004-2024), and writes a PhD at the School of Cultural Studies at Tel Aviv University. Her dissertation discusses the notion of cities of refuge in the Babylonian Talmud and modern Jewish literature.
The judges of the Prime Minister’s Award wrote: “Adi Sorek is a top-notch author and editor. In her books, she has established a unique style of writing that boldly explores the boundaries of creative expression from within and without. Her books unfold for her readers a dense tapestry of affinities and allusions to Hebrew and world literature, erecting multi-layered and polyphonic texts. With genre-defying prose, often blending into existential essayist writing, she brings to the surface questions about home, place and space. In addition, as founder and editor of the Vashti Books Series at Resling Publishing, Adi Sorek has introduced international, avant garde authors to Israeli readers.”
Panel of Judges: Eyal Dotan, Meron Rapaport, Galit Distal Atbaryan, December 2019
From her work
Adi Sorek, Shelter Shelter: a poetic exploration of the Tel Aviv University's shelter signs and the Talmudic Cities of Refuge, The Tel Aviv Review of Books
Adi Sorek, City of Refuge, The Ilanot Review
Adi Sorek, Architect in The Square, The Short Story Project (a story)
Marcela Sulak, Studies in Possibility and Details of Reality, ISRAEL IN TRANSLATION, TLV1 (a podcast)
Adi Sorek, By The Sea, The Ilanot Review (a story from Internal Tourism)
About her work
Marcela Sulak, The horrific Stranger and the Self: Two New Israeli Lyric Essays (that do not look like essays), Essay Daily, October 7 2019
Yoni Livne, Nathan: A clever book that challenges its readers, Yedioth Review, 3.11.2018
“Adi Sorek is part of a small group of Israeli prose writers whose talent, erudition and literary technique are clearly on another level altogether […] Sorek treats her readers as capable of understanding subtle jokes and swift transitions […] the book constructs around its voice an entire city, characters, biographies, every detail of which is simply waiting for attention and motion – from the cheap hot-dog stand next to the Metropolitan to the old Jewish cemetery.”
Ran Bin-Nun, Nathan: The Last Hug, Yedioth Aharonot, 5.12.2018
“This is the kind of literature that knows how to honor what has come before, creating a marvelous, groundbreaking new literature, which is injected with a flash of light into one’s consciousness, that opens up to it with elation. How wonderful to have such a writer here, and how important.”