Israel
Acclaimed Israeli novelist and academic Amos Oz dies of cancer aged 79
The Israel Prize winner's passing was announced by his daughter on Friday
December 28, 2018 14:49
The Israel Prize winner's passing was announced by his daughter on Friday
December 28, 2018 14:49The Israeli novelist and academic Amos Oz, regarded as one of his country’s most famous authors, has died of cancer at the age of 79.
His death on Friday afternoon was announced by his daughter Fania Oz-Salzberger.
“My beloved father, Amos Oz, a wonderful family man, an author, a man of peace and moderation, died today peacefully after a short battle with cancer,” Ms Fania Oz-Salzberger wrote on Twitter.
She added: “He was surrounded by his lovers and knew it to the end. May his good legacy continue to amend the world.”
Oz was born in 1939 in Jerusalem to a right-wing Zionist family, but would rebel against his family’s political views, becoming an early prominent advocate of a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians.
He studied philosophy and Hebrew literature at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, and published his first book — a collection of short stories — in his early twenties.
All of his books, Oz once told the JC, are in some way about “unhappy families”.
He admitted in a 2009 interview that he had “censored” for many decades the story of his mother’s suicide when he was just 12, eventually returning to it in his autobiographical novel A Tale of Love and Darkness.
My beloved father, Amos Oz, a wonderful family man, an author, a man of peace and moderation, died today peacefully after a short battle with cancer. He was surrounded by his lovers and knew it to the end.
— Fania Oz-Salzberger פניה עוז-זלצברגר (@faniaoz) December 28, 2018
May his good legacy continue to amend the world.
“I just wouldn’t discuss my parents, my childhood,” he said in 2009. “This was taboo.
“Over the course of years, anger gradually gave way to curiosity, compassion, humour and endless wonder. I could now write about my parents as if they were my children, as if I was my parents’ parent.”
Oz’s works have been published in over 45 languages.
The actress Natalie Portman, who directed the film of A Tale of Love and Darkness, said her heart was "broken. Today we lost a soul, a mind, a heart, Amos Oz, who brought so much beauty, so much love, and a vision of peace to our lives."
Emeritus Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks said he was only sad that Oz did not live long enough to receive the Nobel Prize for literature that was "certainly his due".
He described the author as "a prophet of our time, secular, but with the burning moral passion that made him not only one of the world’s great novelists, but also, at a certain time, one of the world’s great activists for peace".
While they were "worlds apart in many of our views," he said, "I loved and respected tis man."
