Amos Oz - WikiHQ

Amos Oz (; born Amos Klausner (); 4 May 1939 – 28 December 2018) (later Oz) was born in 1939 in Jerusalem, His father studied history and literature in Vilnius (then part of Poland), and hoped to become a professor of comparative literature, but never gained headway in the academic world. Oz's mother grew up in Rivne (then part of Poland, now Ukraine). She was a highly sensitive and cultured daughter of a wealthy mill owner and his wife, and attended Charles University in Prague, where she studied history and philosophy.

Oz's parents were multilingual (his father claimed he could read in 16 or 17 languages, while his mother spoke four or five languages, but could read in seven or eight) but neither was comfortable speaking in Hebrew, which was adopted as the official language of Israel. They spoke with each other in Russian or Polish, but the only language they allowed Oz to learn was Hebrew. Klausner had a large personal library in his home and hosted salons for Israeli intellectuals; the lifestyle and scholarship of Klausner left an impression on Oz as a young boy.

Oz described himself as an "atheist of the book", stating from a secular perspective that his Jewish heritage "contains first and foremost books [and] texts". His parents were not religious growing up, though Oz attended the religious , since the only alternative was a socialist school affiliated with the Labor movement, to which his family was even more opposed. The noted poet Zelda Schneersohn Mishkovsky was one of his teachers.

During the Holocaust, some of his family members were killed in Lithuania.

His mother, who suffered from depression, committed suicide in January 1952, when he was 12.

At the age of 14, Oz became a Labor Zionist, left home, and joined Kibbutz Hulda. There he was adopted by the Huldai family and changed his surname to "Oz" (Hebrew: "courage").

Oz did his Israel Defense Forces service in the Nahal Brigade, participating in border skirmishes with Syria. After concluding his three years of mandatory regular army service, he was sent by his kibbutz to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he studied philosophy and Hebrew literature. Oz was a full professor of Hebrew literature at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev from 1987 to 2014. In 2014, the family moved to Tel Aviv.

Oz died of cancer on 28 December 2018 in Rabin Medical Center, Petah Tikva, aged 79. He was buried at Kibbutz Hulda. In 2022, Oz's son Daniel published a memoir staunchly defending his father and criticizing his sister for supposedly distorting the truth.

Literary career

thumb|250px|Oz in 2013

Oz published his first book, Where the Jackals Howl, a collection of short stories, in 1965. His first novel, Another Place (published in U.S. as Elsewhere, Perhaps) appeared in 1966. Subsequently, Oz averaged a book per year with the Histadrut press Am Oved. In 1968, he published the critically acclaimed My Michael, establishing himself as one of the most prominent writers of his generation.

His long-time publisher was the Histadrut press Am Oved. However, in 1988, Oz left Am Oved for the Keter Publishing House, which offered him an exclusive contract that granted him a fixed monthly salary regardless of output. In 2007, a selection from the Chinese translation of A Tale of Love and Darkness was the first work of modern Hebrew literature to appear in an official Chinese textbook. The story "Esperanto" from the collection Between Friends was translated into Esperanto in 2015.

Oz's political commentary and literary criticism have been published in the Histadrut newspaper Davar and Yedioth Ahronoth. Translations of his essays have appeared in The New York Review of Books. The Ben-Gurion University of the Negev maintains an archive of his work.

Oz tended to present protagonists in a realistic light with an ironic touch while his treatment of the life in the kibbutz was accompanied by a somewhat critical tone. Oz credited a 1959 translation of American writer Sherwood Anderson's short story collection Winesburg, Ohio with his decision to "write about what was around me". In A Tale of Love and Darkness, his memoir of coming of age in the midst of Israel's violent birth pangs, Oz credited Anderson's "modest book" with his own realization that "the written world ... always revolves around the hand that is writing, wherever it happens to be writing: where you are is the center of the universe." In his 2004 essay "How to Cure a Fanatic" (later the title essay of a 2006 collection), Oz argued that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not a war of religion or cultures or traditions, but rather a real estate dispute – one that will be resolved not by greater understanding, but by painful compromise.

Views and opinions

thumb|Oz speaking at [[Tel Aviv University, faculty of medicine in 2011]]

thumb|Oz in 2015, with [[Mirjam Pressler, who received a prize for a translation of his novel to German]]

Oz was one of the first Israelis to advocate a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict after the Six-Day War. He did so in a 1967 article "Land of our Forefathers" in the Labor newspaper Davar. "Even unavoidable occupation is a corrupting occupation," he wrote. In 1978, he was one of the founders of Peace Now. the construction of an Israeli West Bank barrier, but believed that it should be roughly along the Green Line, the 1949 Armistice line between Israel and Jordan.

Oz was a supporter of the Second Lebanon War in 2006. In the Los Angeles Times, he wrote: "Many times in the past, the Israeli peace movement has criticized Israeli military operations. Not this time. This time, the battle is not over Israeli expansion and colonization. There is no Lebanese territory occupied by Israel. There are no territorial claims from either side... The Israeli peace movement should support Israel's attempt at self-defense, pure and simple, as long as this operation targets mostly Hezbollah and spares, as much as possible, the lives of Lebanese civilians." Later, Oz changed his position of unequivocal support of the war as "self-defense" in the wake of the cabinet's decision to expand operations in Lebanon.

A day before the outbreak of the 2008–2009 Israel–Gaza conflict, Oz signed a statement supporting military action against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Two weeks later, he advocated a ceasefire with Hamas and called attention to the harsh conditions there. He was quoted in the Italian paper Corriere della Sera as saying Hamas was responsible for the outbreak of violence, but the time had come to seek a ceasefire. Oz also said that if innocent citizens were indeed killed in Gaza, it should be treated as a war crime, although he doubted that bombing UN structures was intentional.

In a June 2010 editorial in The New York Times, he wrote: "Hamas is not just a terrorist organization. Hamas is an idea, a desperate and fanatical idea that grew out of the desolation and frustration of many Palestinians. No idea has ever been defeated by force... To defeat an idea, you have to offer a better idea, a more attractive and acceptable one... Israel has to sign a peace agreement with President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah government in the West Bank."

In March 2011, Oz sent imprisoned former Tanzim leader Marwan Barghouti a copy of his book A Tale of Love and Darkness in Arabic translation with his personal dedication in Hebrew: "This story is our story, I hope you read it and understand us as we understand you, hoping to see you outside and in peace, yours, Amos Oz." The gesture was criticized by members of rightist political parties, among them Likud MK Tzipi Hotovely. Assaf Harofeh Hospital canceled Oz's invitation to give the keynote speech at an awards ceremony for outstanding physicians in the wake of this incident.

Oz supported Israeli actions in Gaza during the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict, criticizing the tactic of using human shields, widely imputed to be employed by Hamas at the time, asking: "What would you do if your neighbor across the street sits down on the balcony, puts his little boy on his lap, and starts shooting machine-gun fire into your nursery? What would you do if your neighbor across the street digs a tunnel from his nursery to your nursery in order to blow up your home or in order to kidnap your family?"

Awards and recognition

1965 – literary award from Municipality of Holon
1988 – French Prix Femina étranger
1992 – Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels
2004 – Welt-Literaturpreis from the German newspaper Die Welt
2004 – Ovid Prize from the city of Neptun, Romania

2005 – Goethe Prize from the city of Frankfurt, Germany for his life's work

2006 – Jerusalem-Agnon Prize
2007 – A Tale of Love and Darkness named one of the ten most important books since the creation of the State of Israel

2008 – Tel Aviv University's Dan David Prize ("Past Category") (jointly with Atom Egoyan and Tom Stoppard), for "Creative Rendering of the Past"
2008 – Foreign Policy/Prospect list of 100 top public intellectuals (#72)

<!--* 2009 – Jonas Weiss Memorial Award (Sweden)

2010 – Book fair prize, Budapest (for "Rhyming Life and Death")
2010 – Honorary Fellow of the Israel Museum (May 2010, Jerusalem)
2010 – The Prix Mediterrannee award
2010 – The readers' Award in Torino Festival
2010 – Siegfried Unseld's award, Germany
2010 – Honorary Doctorate, Siena University of Foreigners
2010 – The Readers Prize Of Torino International Literary Festival
2010 – Prix Mediterranee Etranger, France (for "scenes From A Village Life")
2010 – Napoli Prize (for "Scenes From A Village Life")
2010 – Honorary fellowship from the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
2011 – "The Same Sea" adapted for the stage (in Tel Aviv) and as an opera (Bari, Italy)
2011 – Honorary Doctorate, Melbourne University
2012 – Honorary Doctorate, Bucharest University
2012 – Italy's Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa literary prize for "The Hill of Evil Counsel"
2013 – Honorary Doctorate, University of Łódź, Poland
2013 – Newman Prize for Literature by The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, in recognition of his continued literary work -->
2013 – Franz Kafka Prize
2014 – Order of Civil Merit
2014 – Siegfried Lenz Prize, granted by the City of Hamburg

<!--* 2014 – Honorary decoration bestowed by the king of Spain

2014 – The Jewish national award for book of the year for "Between Friends", United States
2014 – Honorary doctorate, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland
2015 – The UCLA Israel studies program annual award -->
2015 – World premiere of the film A Tale of Love and Darkness, based on Amos Oz's autobiographical novel, takes place at the Cannes international film festival. The film is directed and co-written by Natalie Portman, who also stars as Oz's mother, with Amir Tessler playing Oz.
2015 – Honorary degree by the University of Milan (in Language and cultures for communication and international cooperation)
2015 – Park Kyong-ni Prize, a South Korean award valued at $100,000
2018 – Stig Dagerman Prize, Sweden (for "Judas")

<!--* 2016 – Honorary doctorate – Universita degli studi di Milano

2016 – Honorary doctorate – San Martin University, Buenos Aires
2016 – Renmin University prize, China
2016 – Premio "Bottari Lattes Grinzane", Italy
2016 – Premio Letterario Internazionale "Città di Vigevano", Italy
2017 – Abraham Geiger Award (Berlin)
2017 – Jing Dong Literary Prize (China) for "Scenes from Village Life"
2017 – Mount Zion Award (for "Judas")
2017 – "Judas" shortlisted for the International Man Booker Prize
2018 – Stig Dagerman Prize, Sweden (for "Judas")
2018 – Yasnaya Poliana (Tolstoy) Prize, Moscow (for "Judas")
2018 – Taormina Festival Book Prize, Sicily (for "Judas") -->

Published works

Oz published, in Hebrew, novels, novellas, and collections of short stories. He wrote essays and journalism for Israeli and foreign papers. Works by Oz are held by the German National Library, including:

Non-fiction

In the Land of Israel (essays on political issues),
Israel, Palestine and Peace: Essays (1995). Previously published as Whose Holy Land? (1994).
Under This Blazing Light (1995),
Israeli Literature: a Case of Reality Reflecting Fiction (1985),
The Slopes of Lebanon (1989),
The Story Begins: Essays on Literature (1999),
A Tale of Love and Darkness (2002),
How to Cure a Fanatic (2006),
Jews and Words (20 November 2012), with Oz-Salzberger, Fania. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Dear Zealots: Letters from a Divided Land (2017), Houghton Mifflin Harcourt,
What's in an Apple (Conversations with Shira Hadad), 2018

Fiction

Where the Jackals Howl (1965),
Elsewhere, Perhaps (1966),
My Michael (1968),
Unto Death (1971),
Touch the Water, Touch the Wind (1973),
The Hill of Evil Counsel (1976), ;
Soumchi (1978), ;
A Perfect Peace (1982),
Black Box (1987),
To Know a Woman (1989), ;
Fima (1991),
Don't Call It Night (1994),
Panther in the Basement (1995),
The Same Sea (1999),
The Silence of Heaven: Agnon's Fear of God (2000),
Suddenly in the Depth of the Forest (A Fable for all ages) (2005), English translation by Sondra Silverston (2010),
Rhyming Life and Death (2007),
Scenes from Village Life (2009),
Between Friends (2012),
Judas (2014),

Short stories

Articles

"Arafat's gift to us: Sharon", The Guardian, 8 February 2001
"An end to Israeli occupation will mean a just war", The Observer, 7 April 2002
"Free at last", Ynetnews, 21 August 2005
"This can be a vote for peace", The Guardian, 30 March 2006
"Defeating the extremists", Ynetnews, 21 November 2007
"Don't march into Gaza", Ynetnews, 13 February 2008
"Secure ceasefire now", Ynetnews, 31 December 2008

References

External links

Amos Oz Archive
2008 Dan David Prize laureate
Amos Oz – The Nature of Dreams, Documentary film about Amos Oz: In-depth interviews, situations and literature quotes
Heinrich Heine Award for Amos Oz: A Literary Bridge-Builder Par Excellence
Tal Niv from Haaretz speaks with Amos Oz about "Rhyming Life and Death" and more
Amos Oz interviewed on CBC Radio's Writers and Company (2010)
"The Art of Fiction, No. 148" (Amos Oz interview), The Paris Review (Fall 1996)
Honorary Degrees 2013-14, Registrar: Trinity College Dublin, the University of Dublin, Ireland.