Amos Oz

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Amos Oz bigraphy, stories - Journalists

Amos Oz : biography

May 4, 1939 –

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 Beersheba.

Since 1967, he has been a prominent advocate and major cultural voice of a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Oz’s work has been published in some 41 languages, including Arabic in 35 countries. He has received many honours and awards, among them the Legion of Honour of France, the Goethe Prize, the Prince of Asturias Award in Literature, the Heinrich Heine Prize and the Israel Prize. 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.

Literary career

Besides his fiction, Oz regularly publishes essays on the subjects of politics, literature, and peace. He has written extensively for the Israeli Labor newspaper Davar and (since the demise of Davar in the 1990s) for Yedioth Ahronoth. In English, his non-fiction has appeared in various places, including the New York Review of Books. Oz is one of the writers whose works literary researchers study from a fundamental approach. At Ben-Gurion University a special collection was established dealing with him and his works.

In his works, Oz tends to present protagonists in a realistic light with an ironic touch while his treatment of the life in the kibbutz is accompanied by a somewhat critical tone. Oz credits 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 credits 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 argues 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. from National Review. Review of The Slopes of the Volcano from Azure magazine, Autumn 2006, no. 26

Works

Non-fiction

  • In the Land of Israel (essays on political issues) ISBN 0-15-144644-X
  • Israel, Palestine and Peace: Essays (1995) (Previously published: Whose Holy Land? (1994).)
  • Under This Blazing Light (1995) ISBN 0-521-44367-9
  • Israeli Literature: a Case of Reality Reflecting Fiction (1985) ISBN 0-935052-12-7
  • The Slopes of Lebanon (1989) ISBN 0-15-183090-8
  • The Story Begins: Essays on Literature (1999) ISBN 0-15-100297-5
  • A Tale of Love and Darkness (2003) ISBN 0-15-100878-7
  • How to Cure a Fanatic (2006) ISBN 978-0-691-12669-2
  • Jews and Words (20 November 2012) Oz, Amos; Oz-Salzberger, Fania. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300156478

Fiction

  • Where the Jackals Howl (1965) ISBN 0-15-196038-0
  • Elsewhere, Perhaps (1966) ISBN 0-15-183746-5
  • My Michael (1968) ISBN 0-394-47146-6
  • Unto Death (1971) ISBN 0-15-193095-3
  • Touch the Water, Touch the Wind (1973) ISBN 0-15-190873-7
  • The Hill of Evil Counsel (1976) ISBN 0-7011-2248-X ; ISBN 0-15-140234-5
  • Soumchi (1978) ISBN 0-06-024621-9 ; ISBN 0-15-600193-4
  • A Perfect Peace (1982) ISBN 0-15-171696-X
  • Black Box (1987) ISBN 0-15-112888-X
  • To Know a Woman (1989) ISBN 0-7011-3572-7 ; ISBN 0-15-190499-5
  • Fima (1991) ISBN 0-15-189851-0
  • Don’t Call It Night (1994) ISBN 0-15-100152-9
  • A Panther in the Basement (1995) ISBN 0-15-100287-8
  • The Same Sea (1999) ISBN 0-15-100572-9
  • The Silence of Heaven: Agnon’s Fear of God (2000) ISBN 0-691-03692-6
  • Suddenly in the Depth of the Forest (A Fable for all ages) (2005)
  • Rhyming Life and Death (2007) ISBN 978-0-7011-8228-1
  • Scenes from Village Life (2009)
  • Between Friends (2012)