Amos Oz

Amos Oz was a world famous, award-winning and prolific writer of novels, stories, articles and essays. His autobiographical A Tale of Love and Darkness, originally published in Hebrew in 2002, sold more than a million and a half copies worldwide and was translated into 31 languages. During his teenage years, he lived in a kibbutz, a period of peace forming a stark contrast with the succeeding years in military service. He actively participated in border skirmishes and thus experienced war at first hand. Oz often spoke in favour of military self-defence but equally took a strong stand against military expansion. He studied philosophy and Hebrew literature in Jerusalem and lectured at the Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba for nearly twenty years. Oz was a prominent champion of the two-state solution and has repeatedly pleaded for peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, based on practical arrangements. His most recent books are the historical study Jews and Words (2012, with his daughter Fania Oz-Salzberger) and the novel Judas (2014).