Matti Friedman is the author of five works of nonfiction that have been translated into more than a dozen languages.

His newest book is Out of the Sky: Heroism and Rebirth in Nazi Europe (March 2026).

His 2022 book Who by Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai was selected as one of the year's best books by Vanity Fair, was optioned for the screen by 66 Media and Keshet International, and adapted as a successful stage show in Israel.

Spies of No Country: Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel (2019) won the Natan Book Award. 

Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier’s Story of a Forgotten War (2016) was chosen as a New York Times’ Notable Book and as one of Amazon’s 10 best books of the year. Pumpkinflowers was selected as one of the year’s best by Booklist, Mother Jones, Foreign Affairs, the National Post, and the Globe and Mail. 

The Aleppo Codex, an investigation into the strange fate of an ancient Bible manuscript, won the 2014 Sami Rohr Prize, the ALA’s Sophie Brody Medal, and the Canadian Jewish Book Award for history.

Matti’s work as a reporter has taken him from Israel to Lebanon, Morocco, Moscow, the Caucasus, and Washington, DC. A former Associated Press correspondent, his work has appeared in the New York Times,  Smithsonian Magazine, the Atlantic, and elsewhere. He's currently writes from Israel for The Free Press.

Matti was born in Toronto and lives in Jerusalem with his family.