Meir Wieseltier was born in Moscow in 1941, shortly before the German invasion of Russia.

He was co-founder and co-editor of the literary magazine Siman Kriya, and a poetry editor for the Am Oved publishing house.

His translations include four of Shakespeare's tragedies, as well as novels by Virginia Woolf, Charles Dickens, E.M. Forster, and Malcolm Lowry.

Wieseltier often wrote in the first person, assuming the role of a moralist searching for values in the midst of chaos.

[4] His voice is alternately anarchic and involved, angry and caring, trenchant and lyric.