Amos Oz

Israeli writer, novelist, journalist and intellectual (1939–2018)

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Lived 1939–2018, aged 79Israel

Israel WritersWriter / Author

Wikipedia
53 languages
Cross-language footprint
Era
1939–2018
Aged 79
Known for
A Tale of Love and Dar…
2015

Summary

Updated 2026-06-10

He translated Israel's contradictions into 40 books and 45 languages — more than any other Israeli writer — while spending five decades arguing publicly that the state he chronicled needed to split the land in two.

Biography

About

Born Amos Klausner in Jerusalem on 4 May 1939, he became a novelist, journalist, and professor of Hebrew literature at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. From 1967 forward he used his platform to advocate a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, a position that made him as much a political figure as a literary one. His output spanned novels, short stories, children's books, and essays, earning him the Israel Prize, the Goethe Prize, the Franz Kafka Prize, and France's Legion of Honour, among others. The New York Times, in its obituary after his death on 28 December 2018, call…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Amos Oz

Amos Oz

said21 Nov 2008

The [political] left are people with an imagination and the right are those without an imagination.

— "Between Oz and Ayalon" (interview), the Supplement to Shabbat, 21 November 2008, Yedioth Ahronoth, p. 2.

Amos Oz

said17 Jun 1999

The kibbutz way of life is not for everyone.

— "The Great Disruption", In Our Time, BBC Radio 4 (17 June 1999).

Amos Oz

said1991

We have been through many wars in our life. We have been through fighting. I've been on the battlefield myself.

— Interview with NPR (1991)

Amos Oz

said1989

America is too large and too abstract to generalize about.

— From We Are All Close: Conversations with Israeli Writers by Haim Chertok (1989)

Amos Oz

said1989

The Hebrew writers who I feel should be more widely appreciated my own mentors, I suppose-are Micha Berdyczewski, Yosef Haim Brenner, and, of course, Shmuel Yosef Agnon.

— From We Are All Close: Conversations with Israeli Writers by Haim Chertok (1989)

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