21 Facts About Amos Oz

Amos Oz was an Israeli writer, novelist, journalist, and intellectual.

Amos Oz was a professor of Hebrew literature at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

Amos Oz was the author of 40 books, including novels, short story collections, children's books, and essays, and his work has been published in 45 languages, more than that of any other Israeli writer.

Amos Oz was the recipient of many honours and awards, among them the Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels, the Legion of Honour of France, the Israel Prize, the Goethe Prize, the Prince of Asturias Award in Literature, the Heinrich Heine Prize, and the Franz Kafka Prize.

Amos Oz was the only child of Fania and Yehuda Arieh Klausner, immigrants to Mandatory Palestine who had met while studying at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Amos Oz's father studied history and literature in Vilnius, and hoped to become a professor of comparative literature, but never gained headway in the academic world.

Amos Oz worked most of his life as a librarian at the Jewish National and University Library.

Amos Oz 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.

Amos Oz had to abandon her studies when her father's business collapsed during the Great Depression.

Amos Oz's parents were not religious growing up, though Oz attended the community religious school, Tachkemoni, since the only alternative was a socialist school affiliated with the Labor movement, to which his family was even more opposed.

Amos Oz graduated in 1963 and began teaching in the kibbutz high school, while continuing to write.

Amos Oz served as an army reservist in a tank unit that fought in the Sinai Peninsula during the Six-Day War, and in the Golan Heights during the Yom Kippur War.

Amos Oz served as a writer in residence and visiting scholar at universities abroad.

Amos Oz's works have been translated into some 45 languages, more than any other Israeli writer.

Amos Oz did so in a 1967 article "Land of our Forefathers" in the Labor newspaper Davar.

Amos Oz did not oppose 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.

Amos Oz advocated that Jerusalem be divided into numerous zones, not just Jewish and Palestinian zones, including one for the Eastern Orthodox, one for Hasidic Jews, an international zone, and so on.

Amos Oz was opposed to Israeli settlement activity and was among the first to praise the Oslo Accords and talks with the PLO.

Amos Oz was perceived as an eloquent spokesperson of the Zionist left.

Amos Oz 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.

Amos Oz wrote essays and journalism for Israeli and foreign papers.