Background
Hazaz was born in a small village of Sidorovichi, Kiev Governorate in the Russian Empire in 1898.
Hazaz was born in a small village of Sidorovichi, Kiev Governorate in the Russian Empire in 1898.
Like many Jewish writers from his generation in the Russian Empire, witnessing pogroms played a formative role on his work. He lived in a number of major European cities, including Kiev, Kharkiv, Moscow, Constantinople, Paris and Berlin before emigrating to the then British Mandate of Palestine in 1931. settling in Jerusalem. From 1961 until his death in 1973, Hazaz lived in the Jerusalem neighbourhood of Talbiya.
Hazaz was first published in 1918 under a pseudonym.
He then published a number of short stories in Journals. Halfway through the 1920s, his stories where gaining recognition.
In 1930, he released his first novel (בישוב של יער), which focuses on a Jewish family in Ukraine around the Russo-Japanese War.