Teacher of Hebrew Literature and writer
Amos Oz graduated in Philosophy and Literature from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. For 25 years he lived on the Kibbutz Hulda, where he was a secondary school teacher. In 1986 he moved to Arad, in the Negev Desert. Since 1987 he has been a professor of Hebrew Literature at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, and he was appointed to its Chair of Modern Hebrew Literature in 1993. He has been a member of the Hebrew Language Academy since 1991. He has also been a visiting professor and guest writer at different universities in the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany.
His novels have always sparked off literary and political controversy, and have made him an important figure in Israel. To date he has published eleven novels, some of the best known being: My Michael (1968), Touch the Water, Touch the Wind (1973), A Perfect Peace (1982), The Black Box (1987), Fima (1991), Don't Call It Night (1994), The Same Sea (1998) and A Tale of Love and Darkness (2002), his autobiographic novel. He has been distinguished with numerous international prizes for his works and in his own country with the Israeli Prize for Literature (1998).
Since 1967 he has written numerous articles and essays on the Arab-Israeli conflict, promulgating his commitment based on the mutual recognition and co-existence between Israel and Palestine in the Gaza Strip and on the West Bank. Amongst his best known essays are: Under This Blazing Light (1978), In the Land of Israel (1983), The Slopes of Lebanon (1987), Israel, Palestine, and Peace (1994), All Our Hopes (1998) and But These are Two Different Wars (2002). He is one of the leaders of the Peace Now movement and he has been awarded several famous peace prizes: the Friedenspreis (1992, Germany), Chevalier of the Legion of Honour (1997, France), Prize for the Freedom of Expression (2002, Norway) and the International Medal for Tolerance (Poland, 2002).
