Amos Oz

Amos Oz (born May 4, 1939), birth name Amos Klausner, is an Israeli writer, novelist, and journalist. He is also a professor of literature at Ben-Gurion University in Be'er Sheva. Since 1967, he has been a prominent advocate of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Life

He was born in Jerusalem, where he grew up at No. 18 Amos Street in the Kerem Avraham neighborhood. Roughly half of his fiction is set within a mile of where he grew up. His parents, Yehuda Arieh Klausner and Fania Musman, were Zionist immigrants from Eastern Europe. His father studied history and literature in Vilnius, Lithuania. In Jerusalem his father was a librarian and writer. His maternal grandfather had owned a mill in Rovno, western Ukraine, but moved with his family to Haifa in 1934.

Related Topics:
Jerusalem - Kerem Avraham - Zionist - Eastern Europe - Vilnius - Lithuania - Rovno - Ukraine - Haifa

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Politically his family background was right-wing Revisionist Zionists. His uncle Joseph Klausner was the Herut party candidate for the presidency against Chaim Weizmann and was chair of the Hebrew literary society at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Related Topics:
Right-wing - Revisionist Zionists - Joseph Klausner - Herut - Chaim Weizmann - Hebrew University of Jerusalem

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

He and his family were distant from religion, disdaining its irrationality. Yet he attended the community religious school Tachkemoni. The alternative was the socialistic school affiliated with the labor movement, to which his family was decidedly opposed in their political values. The noted poet Zelda was one of his teachers. His secondary schooling took place at the Hebrew high school Rehavia.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

His mother committed suicide when he was twelve, causing him repercussions that he would explore in his memoir A Tale of Love and Darkness. He became a Labor Zionist and joined Kibbutz Hulda at the age of fourteen. There he was adopted by the Huldai family (whose firstborn son Ron now serves as mayor of Tel Aviv) and lived a full kibbutz life. At this time he changed his surname to "Oz", Hebrew for "strength". "Tel Aviv was not radical enough," he later said, "only the kibbutz was radical enough." However, by his own account he was "a disaster as a laborer... the joke of the kibbutz." He remained living and working on the kibbutz until he and his wife Nily moved to Arad in 1986 on account of his son Daniel's asthma; however, as his writing career flowered he was allowed to gradually decrease his time devoted to normal kibbutz work: the royalties from his writing produced sufficient income for the kibbutz to justify this. In his own words, he "became a branch of the farm".

Related Topics:
Suicide - Labor Zionist - Kibbutz - Hebrew - Tel Aviv - Arad - Asthma

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Like most Jewish Israelis, he served in the Israeli Defense Forces. In the late 1950s he served in the kibbutz-oriented Nahal unit and was involved in border skirmishes with Syria; during the Six-Day War (1967) he was with a tank unit in Sinai; during the Yom Kippur War (1973) he served in the Golan Heights.

Related Topics:
Jew - Israeli Defense Forces - Nahal - Syria - Six-Day War - Tank - Sinai - Yom Kippur War - Golan Heights

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

After Nahal, Oz studied philosophy and Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University. Except for some short articles in the kibbutz newsletter and the newspaper Davar, he didn't publish anything until the age of 22, when he began to publish books. His first collection of stories Where the Jackal Howls appeared in 1965. His first novel Elsewhere, Perhaps was published in 1966. He began to write incessantly, publishing an average of one book per year on the Labor Party press, Am Oved.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Oz left Am Oved despite his political affiliation. He went to Keter because he received an exclusive contract that granted him a fixed monthly salary regardless of frequency of publication.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

His oldest daughter, Fania, teaches history at Haifa University.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Oz was awarded his country?s most prestigious prize: the Israel Prize for Literature in 1998, the fiftieth anniversary year of Israel?s independence. In 2005, he was awarded the Goethe Cultural Award from the city of Frankfurt, Germany, a prestigious prize which was awarded in the past to the likes of Sigmund Freud and Thomas Mann for his life's work.

Related Topics:
Israel Prize - Goethe Cultural Award - Frankfurt - Germany - Sigmund Freud - Thomas Mann

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

He has written 18 books in Hebrew, and about 450 articles and essays. His works have been translated into some 30 languages.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~