Shalom Katav was born Salīm al-Kātib in Baghdad in 1931. As a youth he attended the Alliance Israélite Universelle School there and became a member of the Zionist underground movement (He-Halutz). He began publishing in Arabic in Iraq and continued to do so after he immigrated to Israel in 1950, but in time he shifted mainly to Hebrew. In Israel, he was a teacher, elementary school principal, and school district superintendent. From 1969 to 1972 he was the World Zionist Organization’s educational and cultural director for southern France.

Katav’s first book, Muwākibal-Ḥirmān (Carava…