- Person
- Amos Oz
- Lived
- 1939–2018
- Field
- Novelist and essayist
- From
- Israeli
The story
Amos Oz began writing as a young member of Kibbutz Hulda, where he worked in the fields and taught in the high school. At first the kibbutz allowed him just one day a week for writing. In 1965 he published his first book, the story collection Where the Jackals Howl, followed in 1966 by his first novel, Elsewhere, Perhaps, set on a kibbutz. His second novel, My Michael (1968), became a bestseller and made his name. When it did, he joked that he had become a branch of the farm.
From then on he averaged almost a book a year. Over five decades he published 40 books: 14 novels, five collections of stories and novellas, two children's books and twelve books of articles and essays, along with about 450 articles. His novels included A Perfect Peace, Black Box, To Know a Woman, Fima, Panther in the Basement and The Same Sea, and his last, Judas, appeared in 2014. Among his non-fiction were In the Land of Israel, How to Cure a Fanatic and his acclaimed memoir A Tale of Love and Darkness, and for young readers he wrote Soumchi (1978).
His central subject, he said, could be summed up in one word: families. Given two words, he would say unhappy families. He wrote about kibbutz members, Jerusalem clerks and lonely spouses with realism, irony and warmth, and he credited a Hebrew translation of Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio with teaching him to write about what was around him.
His work travelled far. According to Wikipedia, his books were translated into some 45 languages, more than those of any other Israeli writer; the Jewish Virtual Library gives a figure of more than 30. My Michael alone appeared in more than 30 languages, and a selection from A Tale of Love and Darkness became the first modern Hebrew literature in an official Chinese textbook. Much of his work reached English readers through the translator Nicholas de Lange.
Oz also taught Hebrew literature as a professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev from 1987 to 2014, and the university maintains an archive of his work. He became a familiar name in bookshops across Europe, the Americas and Asia, and won major prizes in Israel, Germany, France, Spain and beyond.
Why it matters
His translated work let readers around the world encounter ordinary Israeli lives from the inside, beyond headlines about conflict.
About Amos Oz
Jerusalem-born novelist of My Michael and A Tale of Love and Darkness, Israel’s most translated writer and a lifelong voice for a two-state peace.
More about Amos Oz
- Amos Oz was the first Hebrew writer in a Chinese textbookIn 2007 a passage from the Chinese translation of A Tale of Love and Darkness became the first modern Hebrew literature to appear in an official Chinese textbook.
- My Michael made Amos Oz a leader of Hebrew fictionAmos Oz's 1968 novel My Michael, about a young Jerusalem wife's inner life, was a bestseller that helped launch the Israeli literary New Wave.
- Amos Oz's memoir became a modern Hebrew classicAmos Oz's 2002 memoir A Tale of Love and Darkness was named in 2007 one of the ten most important books since Israel's founding, and became a film in 2015.
- Amos Oz prescribed curiosity and humour against fanaticismIn How to Cure a Fanatic (2006), Amos Oz argued that curiosity, imagination and a sense of humour are the best antidotes to fanaticism of every kind.
Sources
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.