Winner of the Sapphire Award 2021: Hila Bloom on "How to Love Your Home" | Israel today

Hila Blum is the winner of the Sapphire Prize of the Lottery for 2021, for her book "How to love your daughter" (Kinneret Zmora Publishing).

The award ceremony was held last night at the Steimatzky complex in Rosh HaAyin.

Writer Romit Samson won the first prize for her book "The Back Kitchen" (with an employee).

Bloom was born in 1969 in Jerusalem, served as a reporter for the newspaper "Bamchana" and studied English literature at the Hebrew University.

After a journalistic career, she worked for years as a source literature editor at Kinneret-Zmora, where she edited the books of Eshkol Nevo, Amir Gutfreund and Etgar Keret, among others.

"How to love your daughter" is her second book, after "The Visit" (2011).

On the grounds of winning Bloom's book, the jury wrote: "The book 'How to Love Your Daughter' opens with a woman secretly looking out the window at her daughter's family after years of disconnection and also puts his readers behind the family window, behind the glass, on the couch, as the poet writes. "Noise is separate from light."

The judges further wrote that "in restrained, accurate, sensitive and pathos-free writing, the book provides a polarized perspective between distance and closeness. "Strong, for a female lineage, for love and its pains and for the signs of construction and destruction that cannot be separated, and all this in refined, skilled and innovative writing."

The judging panel, headed by retired Major General Giora Rom, this year also included Yochai Oppenheimer, Anat Weissman, Zohar Almkeys, Amos Noy, Amichai Hasson and Reut Ben Yaakov.

Bloom is selected from the short list, which also included the books of Shimon Adaf, Dror Mishani, Yaniv Itzkovich and Boris Seidman.

Upon winning, Bloom received a prize of NIS 150,000, and her book will be translated into Arabic and another language of her choice.

Each of the other four candidates received a prize on the verge of NIS 40,000.

In the reasons for winning Roman Samson's book, the judges wrote: "Through the Israeli obsession with real estate and the intrigues of municipal government, Roman Samson unfolds the story of every small Israeli city on the beach, and describes the many people who live and work in it.

"The writer's fluent writing ignites gaps between the public and the hidden, naturally moves from a legal drama to situations full of humor, and moves between intimate secrets and the tangle of bureaucracy and the approaching local election cloud hovering over the story's progress." Samson received a prize of NIS 75,000.

Mifal HaPais chairman Avigdor Yitzhaki said at the ceremony: "Last year we had to hold the ceremony in a different and distant format, I am so happy that this year we were able to gather here and celebrate the fruits of Israeli art.

Mifal Hapayis will continue to lead the award for many more years. "

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