An Israeli author is in the running to win a fiction prize worth £10,000.

Aharon Appelfeld’s novel, Blooms of Darkness, is one of six titles shortlisted for the 2012 Independent Foreign Fiction Award.

The book, translated by Jeffrey M Green, tells the story of the relationship between a Jewish boy and a prostitute at a brothel where he hides from the Nazis.

Mr Appelfeld, a Holocaust survivor who spent three years hiding from the Nazis in the forests of the Ukraine, is the author of more than 40 books and is one of the most distinguished literary figures in Israel.

The 80-year-old writer is a former winner of the Israel Prize for literature and the National Jewish Book award for fiction.

Umberto Eco, the Italian author whose latest book The Prague Cemetery follows an antisemitic forger and traces the complex history of conspiracy theories about Jews, has also been shortlisted.