Aharon Appelfeld scoops Independent foreign fiction prize

Inspired by his experiences during the Holocaust, a novel by the 80-year-old Israeli author Aharon Appelfeld has won the Independent foreign fiction prize. Blooms of Darkness is loosely based on his childhood during the second world war. The author was deported to a labour camp at Transnistria at the age of seven, later escaping and ending up in Palestine in 1946, aged 14. Although the author grew up speaking German, he chooses to write instead in the Hebrew he learned from the age of 14, calling German "the language of the murderers"