Ephraim Kishon

Ephraim Kishon, novelist, playwright, journalist and filmmaker, has died aged 80 in Switzerland. He was loved in Germany as much as in his adopted homeland of Israel for his acerbic wit.

Kishon survived Nazi persecution to arrive in Israel, where he was credited with the invention of national satire. During the 1950s and 1960s, he was "worshipped as Israeli humour incarnate", Talya Halkin wrote last December in the Jerusalem Post.

His fictitious characters and accurate observations shaped Israel's social agenda, deflated pomposity and pricked Israelis' consciences. Kishon also challenged long-standing taboos. One was the mistreatment of incomers, especially Mizrachi Jews from Arab nations, by David Ben-Gurion's socialist Israel - a nation of immigrants.

Kishon's 1964 play and film, Salah Shabati, has immigrants emerging from the sea only to be vilified by "veteran" Ashkenazi Israelis (of European Jewish origin) on the shore. In the following scene, these new immigrants are now on the shore, vilifying the next wave. Salah Shabati was revived as a musical in Tel Aviv in 1988. Its eponymous Moroccan Jewish hero battles heartless bureaucrats, patronising do-gooders and thinly veiled racism. Salah, played in the film by Chaim Topol, berates a social worker: "Lady, no work, no bread, no housing, seven children, one in the womb, his name is Ben-Gurion. For God's sake, get out of here."

Kishon, proudly bourgeois and determinedly anti-socialist, called Israel "a country where nobody expects miracles, but everyone takes them for granted". He imagined a confrontation between the public and a government minister, in which "the public submits its resignation on the eighth day".

His insights into human foibles had universal appeal, with more than 50 books translated into 37 languages and printed in 43m copies. Kishon's Family Stories is said to be the best-selling book in Hebrew after the Bible. The popularity of his observational humour in German-speaking countries tickled his mordant sensibility: "The children of my hangmen are my admirers."

He was born Ferenc Hoffmann in Budapest, Hungary, the son of a bank manager. The Hoffmanns were assimilated Jews, but that did not shield them from Nazi Germans and Hungarian fascists. Kishon spent much of his youth in hiding, and wrote his first story in the cellar of a bombed house.

Kishon cheated death when a Nazi officer began shooting labour camp inmates, and then escaped while on a forced march to Sobibor extermination camp. "They made a mistake," he wrote of the Nazis, "they left one satirist alive."

However, a literary career was a distant dream for the immigrant who washed up in Israel in 1949, knowing neither Yiddish nor Hebrew. He was renamed Kishon and promptly dispatched to a desolate "absorption camp", the model for the district portrayed in Salah Shabati.

Kishon moved to a kibbutz near Nazareth, studied metalwork and learnt enough Hebrew to publish his anti-bureaucratic fantasy, The Blaumilch Canal, in the daily paper, Davar. By 1952, he had a whimsical column in the mass-circulation paper, Ma'ariv. Topol, a lifelong friend whose career Kishon launched, recalled his words touched "simple readers and decision-makers" alike, and boosted national morale during the difficult 1960s.

Adopting the persona of a patriotic Israeli Everyman after the six-day war, Kishon criticised what he saw as unfair prejudice against Israel in So Sorry We Won (1967) and Woe To The Victors (1969). Other books in English translation cheekily subverted biblical lore, including Look Back Mrs Lot (1960), Noah's Ark, Tourist Class (1962) and The Seasick Whale (1965). He was working on a new novel when he died of a heart attack.

Kishon wrote 13 plays, and directed four more films in Hebrew - Ervinka (1967), The Big Dig (1969), The Policeman (1971) and The Fox In The Chicken Coop (1978). He was twice nominated for an Academy Award, and won three Golden Globes. In 2003, he won the Israel Prize for lifetime achievement.

Not everyone approved. Cultural purists criticised Kishon's populist antics, sophisticates viewed his Chaplinesque humour as anachronistic, and some Mizrachi intellectuals felt Salah Shabati pandered to stereotypes. Kishon became estranged from Israel. Lamenting the dearth of true satire on Israeli television, he recently admitted feeling like "the last Mohican".

He had recently spent much time in Switzerland, where he loved to lampoon national habits. One short story is about a holiday in Switzerland blighted by the impossibility of disposing of a used paper wrapper. He considers posting it back to Israel, but elects to have it toasted in a top restaurant, covered with dill sauce and then to eat it. He also describes a Zurich zookeeper who imports fleas to keep his chimpanzee happy, but complains they "fled in the face of Swiss hygiene".

Two ex-wives predeceased Kishon: Eva Klamer, whom he divorced in 1959, and Sara Lipovitz, who died in 2002. Lisa, his third wife, survives him, as do three grown-up children - two sons and a daughter - whose infant antics inspired many of his famous characters.

· Ephraim Kishon (Ferenc Hoffmann), satirist, born August 23 1924; died January 29 2005

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTEoKyaqpSerq96wqikaKaVrMBwfo9pbGielZd8cX2OoKyaqpSerq%2B7waKrrpminrK0esGopqSrn5e2tcHAq6Ceqw%3D%3D