Amos
Oz
(1939 - )
Amos Oz was born in 1939 in Jerusalem. At the age of 15 he went to live on a kibbutz. He studied philosophy and literature at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and was visiting fellow at Oxford University, author-in- residence at the Hebrew University and writer-in-residence at Colorado College. He has been named Officer of Arts and Letters of France. An author of prose for both children and adults, as well as an essayist, he has been widely translated and is internationally acclaimed. He has been honoured with the French Prix Femina and the 1992 Frankfurt Peace Prize. He lives in the southern town Arad and teaches literature at Ben Gurion University of the Negev.
Amos Oz has rooted his writing in the tempestuous history of his homeland. Through his writing, both fiction and nonfiction, runs a common thread: examining human nature, recognizing its frailty but glorying in its variety, Oz consistently makes the plea for an end to ambivalence, for dialogue, for a channelling of passions towards faith in the future. With an economy of words, Oz presents the people of Israel, its political tribulations and biblical landscape. Newsweek writes, “Eloquent, humane, even religious in the deepest sense, [Oz] emerges as a kind of Zionist Orwell: a complex man obsessed with simple decency and determined above all to tell the truth, regardless of whom it offends.”
Books Published in Hebrew
Where the Jackals Howl (stories), Massada, 1965 Am Oved, 1976
Elsewhere, Perhaps (novel), Sifriat Poalim, 1966; Keter, 1989
My Michael (novel), Am Oved, 1968; Keter, 1990
Unto Death (novellas), Sifriat Poalim, 1971; Keter, 1991
Touch the Water, Touch the Wind (novel), Am Oved, 1973
The Hill of Evil Counsel (novellas), Am Oved, 1976
Soumchi (youth), Am Oved, 1978; Keter, 1990
Under this Blazing Light (essays), Sifriat Poalim, 1979; Keter, 1990
A Perfect Peace (novel), Am Oved, 1982; Keter, 1992
In the Land of Israel (essays), Am Oved, 1983
Black Box (novel), Am Oved, 1987
The Slopes of Lebanon (essays), Am Oved, 1988
To Know a Woman (novel), Keter & Am Oved, 1989
The Third Condition (novel), Keter, 1991
The Silence of Heaven (literary criticism), Keter, 1993
Courtesy of:
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/oz.html