Hillel Halkin is a writer, critic, and well-known translator whose journalism and essays from Israel have regularly appeared in publications like Commentary and The New Republic for over thirty years. His first book, Letters To An American Jewish Friend, the recipient of a National Jewish Book Award, caused spirited controversy. His much-acclaimed Across The Sabbath River: In Search Of A Lost Tribe of Israel, received the 2002 Lucy Dawidowicz Prize for the writing of history. A Strange Death: a story discovered in Palestine was published by Public Affairs (US) and Weidenfeld & Nicolson (UK) in 2005, and AB Yehoshua called it ' a personal adventure into the past whose skilled, gripping prose moves back and forth between the documentary and the imaginative...An artful treatment of history worthy of the highest praise.' Born in New York in 1939, he now lives in Israel.