Amos Oz

Amos Oz (Jerusalem, 1939 – Tel Aviv, 2018) was an Israeli novelist, journalist and essayist, and one of the most important contemporary writers in Hebrew. Born Amos Klausner, he wrote about the strains on Israeli society, the pressure of ideology, the question of borders and a violent historical past. He matters both for his fiction and for his part in the public debate over peace in the Middle East.

He was the son of immigrants who had come from Lithuania and Rivne. At home his parents spoke Russian or Polish between themselves, but they allowed their son to learn only Hebrew. His mother, who suffered from depression, took her own life when he was twelve, an event he would return to decades later in his memoir. At fourteen he left home for Kibbutz Hulda, where he changed his surname to Oz, meaning courage in Hebrew. He studied philosophy and literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and later spent time at Oxford.

His first stories appeared in 1965 and his first novel, Elsewhere, Perhaps, in 1966. With My Michael (1968) he established himself as one of the leading figures of the Israeli New Wave of the 1960s. His prose often presents characters with realism and a touch of irony, while his view of the kibbutz mixes affection with criticism. He wrote novels, stories, essays and many newspaper articles, and his work was translated into dozens of languages.

As a public figure, he co-founded the peace movement Peace Now in the 1970s and backed a two-state solution, opposing Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories. For years he taught Hebrew literature at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He received many honours, including the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature in 2007, and in A Tale of Love and Darkness he offered an intimate portrait of his childhood in Jerusalem.

His legacy lies in turning family life and everyday experience into a mirror of Israel's collective conflicts. He died of cancer in Tel Aviv in 2018, aged 79.