Nina Voronel Playwright, prose writer, writes in Russian, lives in Israel. Date of Birth: 28.02.1932 Country: Israel

Biography of Nina Voronel

Nina Voronel is a Russian playwright, prose writer, and translator who currently resides in Israel. She was born on February 28, 1932, in Kharkiv, Ukraine, into a family of a professor of economics. Voronel completed her studies at the Faculty of Physics at Kharkiv University in 1954. However, it was her encounter with Kornei Chukovsky that had a significant influence on her decision to pursue a career in literature.

From 1956 to 1960, Voronel studied at the Literary Institute, specializing in translations from English literature. In 1961, she gained widespread recognition for her translation of Oscar Wilde's "Ballad of Reading Gaol." In 2003, Voronel's translation of Saul Bellow's novel, "Mr. Sammler's Planet," was published.

Voronel began her writing career with children's stories, which were first published in 1965. Around the same time, she also turned to the genre of drama, and her first play, "Read the Letter" (1968), a phantasmagoria, was banned after its premiere in Perm, and the director was dismissed from his position. This marked the end of Voronel's opportunities for staging and publications. However, her husband, physicist Alexander Voronel, included her plays in his self-published journal, "Jews in the USSR."

In 1972, the Voronels applied for emigration to Israel and were able to leave in 1974. Nina Voronel became a citizen of Israel in 1975. Her controversial memoirs sparked accusations of being unreliable.

Voronel is known for her collection of fantastical plays titled "Six Eight Forty-Eight." Her adventurous epic, "The Gothic Novel" (2005), also known as "The Fall of the Fallen Angel," depicts the adventures of a former Israeli paratrooper named Uri in Europe. The action initially takes place in one gothic castle in Germany and then moves to another in England, eventually exposing the ghosts and other supernatural elements as fraudulent.