Matan Yair​

 

​Matan Yair was born in 1977 in Jerusalem, Israel. He holds a BA in General History and Classical Studies, Literature, and Renaissance Studies from Tel Aviv University, where he later completed a research-based MA in Cultural Studies, an MFA in Film Production, and a Teaching Certificate in History. He is also a graduate of the Screenwriting program at the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School. 
Yair is a novelist, screenwriter, and acclaimed filmmaker. In 2008, his debut novel, A Room of His Own, was published by Toby Press, earning him the Pardes Fellowship from the National Library of Israel. His second novel, Less Thorns (2019, Yedioth Books), was longlisted for the prestigious Sapir Prize. Break Up (2025), published by Pardes, is his third novel. 
Alongside his literary work, Yair has directed several award-winning feature films – Scaffolding (2017), Unseen (2019), and A Room of His Own (2023) – all supported by the Israel Film Fund. He also created the television drama series One on One for the Israeli public broadcaster Kan 11. 
Yair taught literature and history at a high school in Herzliya for over a decade and currently teaches screenwriting at the Sam Spiegel School, Ma’aleh Film School in Jerusalem, and the Department of Film and Television at Tel Aviv University.

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Break Up

Novel

Publisher: Pardes

Year: 2025

175 pp.

 

Translation Rights: World
Translations: Partial English translation available 

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How does one turn life into a compelling story? What lurks in the darkest corners of one’s life and love? What and where are the lines drawn between fantasy and memory, and how can brilliant writing cross them? “The novel by Matan Yair is an explosive, charismatic and seductive work of fiction, without a single phony note” praises Haaretz’ critic.  
He promised his publishers that he would write his entire sexual history. He devised and employed code words and names that only he could decipher. He wrote about his wife's infidelities. About the episode from his past at the hotel, which wouldn't let him be and kept resurfacing in his life. He wrote about falling in love with the director who made a documentary about his mother. About all the signs showing that his wife had a new love. He wrote about all the moments in his life when sex and love intermingled, when the boundaries blurred. He wrote about himself, about his mother, his father, his sister, his wife, as well as his daughters, and about all the sexual encounters in his life that were etched into him. 
This is the third novel by the writer, teacher, and film director Matan Yair (born 1977). His debut, A Room of His Own, won him a prestigious Pardes Fellowship from the Israeli National Library. His second book, Fewer Thorns, was longlisted for the highly regarded Sapir Prize. The films he directed (Scaffolding, Write Down My ID—I'm Your Father, Maturity, A Room of His Own) were received with great acclaim and screened worldwide.

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Blurbs

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There are moments in life that are hard to define in words. Not much happens in them; a factual description sounds dry and routine, yet they are charged with intensity. There are processes that feel like a significant journey, even if, in practice, little has changed between their beginning and end. And there are protagonists who stay with us long after we finish reading—precisely because they represent the exact opposite of who we would want to be. Matan Yair manages to distill all of these into a story that is hard to overstate, except for one concluding sentence: Run and read it….Yair is a virtuoso of situational description; he manages to depict everyday scenes—such as an encounter between the protagonist and his sister with wealthy children staying at the hotel where the protagonist's parents run a failing souvenir shop—in a way that imbues them with a dramatic and powerful resonance… A knockout of a book; I loved it.

Shaul Olmert, Author

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Critical Praise

 

He dares to anchor the narrative in a protagonist who makes no bid for affection, yet whose confessional voice steadily breeds intimacy, forcing the reader to remain locked in the claustrophobia of his mind...

He breaks away from the conventional mold. Rather than settling for a routine account of a marital or masculine crisis, he compels his protagonist into far more intimate and unsettling terrain. He asserts that arriving at the true self requires excavating the past, unearthing hidden strata, and exposing those thoughts, fantasies, and fears that rarely surface in the public sphere—largely because they edge on the taboo. Whether morally defensible or not, these thoughts are not allowed to stay silenced; the novel refuses to keep their secret. Even the confessional mechanism on which the book is built undergoes a subversion at Yair’s hands: the more the protagonist confesses, the more estranged he becomes. Confession offers no catharsis, no absolution; instead, it relentlessly lays bare a mind steeped in anxiety, jealousy, desire, and the dread of mortality. If confession forms the novel’s structural backbone, sexuality is its dialect. The fixation on sex, which occupies so central a place in the book, functions as the protagonist's primary confessional engine—the sole medium through which he negotiates his fears and desires, and projects his self-worth to the world.

Yarden Yerushalmi, Ma’ala

An incomparably beautiful and complex book... I’ve read it three times... A psychological portrait of masculinity, male desire, a wounded past... Go read Break Up.

Gili Izikovich, Tarbut Yom Alef, The Ha'aretz Gallery Podcast, June 7, 2026

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​With Break Up, Matan Yair, widely recognized as a gifted and daring filmmaker, proves that he is one of the leading voices in contemporary Israeli literature. This is an exceptional novel — one of the most powerful and impressive works I have read in recent years. Its effect is rare and immediate, born from a near-chemical reaction between content and style. Yair employs bold narrative strategies and unexpected literary devices to propel the story into surprising and at times unsettling territories.

Omri Herzog, Haaretz

 

Yair writes in a single, breathless flow, without paragraph breaks, in a voice that is as raw and associative as it is intensely intimate. What may initially feel like an unpolished draft gradually reveals itself as a deliberate and inventive choice — an invitation to experience what it means when literature refuses to mediate, soften, or stylize and polish life. This is not an erotic novel, nor is it pornographic; sexuality here is a means rather than an end, a way of exposing what is usually concealed: family silence, male vulnerability, and emotional inheritance.

Gili Izikovich, Haaretz Gallery

 

The fundamental power of the book stems both from the profound honesty with which it is written and from its sense of urgency—the ability to convey to the reader the inner turmoil in which the protagonist lives. Yet, the book's strength lies not only in the sincerity of its subject matter. As mentioned, it is written with a sense of haste and is brimming with vivid details, the accumulation of which reveals the sheer richness of life to anyone possessing a keen eye for observation.

Eric Glessner, Literary supplement, Yedioth

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There are passages in Break Up driven by a ferocious narrative momentum — a roaring, almost violent surge that transforms the lived experience into a story. This is a rare gift: the ability, even momentarily, to operate a machine that converts life itself into literature. Few writers possess it, and Yair unmistakably does.

Eyal Megged, Yedioth Ahronoth

 

Behind the explicit sexual recollections lies a profound abyss of searching. Through his obsessive cataloging of desires, the narrator confronts his deepest fears: the collapse of intimacy, inherited patterns of masculinity, and the possibility that one’s life may never align with one’s aspirations. Break-Up offers a piercing portrait of a man leaving behind not a lover, but the version of himself he once hoped to become.

Dalia Gutman, “Hachi Bazman” Podcast

 

Break Up is an antithesis to both the myth of the Israeli macho hero and to conventional erotic literature. The unnamed protagonist is often uncomfortable, at times infuriating, yet endlessly compelling. Yair’s prose is precise, unsparing yet deeply humane, leaving the reader unsettled long after the final page.

Shaked Shapira, Reading Club Recommendation

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