Benjamin Balint


Benjamin Balint is an American-Israeli author, journalist, educator, and translator.  His 2018 book explores the literary legacy of Franz Kafka. He lives in Jerusalem.

Writing career

He contributes regularly to the Wall Street Journal, Die Zeit, Haaretz, the Weekly Standard, and the Claremont Review of Books.
Balint's first book, Running Commentary, was published in 2010. In 2017 he co-wrote Jerusalem: City of the Book with Merav Mack.
In 2018 he published Kafka’s Last Trial  which narrates the journey of Kafka's manuscripts from Czechoslovakia to Israel's National Library. For this work, Balint was awarded the 2020 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. The book was also a finalist for the 2020 Wingate Literary Prize.
His literary translations from Hebrew to English have appeared in the New Yorker.
Balint was a fellow at the Hudson Institute and Van Leer Institute.