Professor

Amos Oz

(
1939
2018
)
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
;
Arad, Israel
Writer (novelist)
Area
Humanities and Arts
Specialty
Literature
Elected
2007
International Honorary Member

 

Professor Amos Oz is the Professor of Literature at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev as well as a novelist, essayist, professor, and social activist. He is one of the best-known Israeli authors and one of the leading figures in the Peace Now movement. Most of his prolific output (25 works or more), spanning the years 1965 - 2005, has been translated from Hebrew into 35 languages and distributed in 30 countries. Oz rooted his writing in the tempestuous history of his homeland. Through his writing, both fiction and nonfiction, runs a common thread: examining human nature, recognizing its frailty but glorying in its variety, Oz consistently makes the plea for an end to ambivalence, for dialogue, for a channelling of passions towards faith in the future. With an economy of words, Oz presents the people of Israel, its political tribulations and biblical landscape. Newsweek writes, “Eloquent, humane, even religious in the deepest sense, [Oz] emerges as a kind of Zionist Orwell: a complex man obsessed with simple decency and determined above all to tell the truth, regardless of whom it offends.” He has received an honorary fellowship at the Israel Museum and has received esteemed awards such as the Bernstein Prize, Brenner Prize, Israel Prize, Prince of Asturias Award, Tel Aviv University's Dan David Prize, Frankfurt Peace Prize, Napoli Prize, Franz Kafka Prize, and Park Kyong-ni Prize. He has been a visiting writer at Indiana University, Tübingen University, Boston University, and Stanford University.

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