Amos Oz

Amos Oz was born in 1939 in Jerusalem

Amos Oz was born Amos Klausner in Jerusalem in 1939 and grew up in the Kerem Avraham neighborhood. He was the only child of Fania and Yehuda Arieh Klausner, who worked as a librarian. His mother took her own life in 1952, when he was 12.

He studied at the religious Tachkemoni school and later at Gymnasia Rehavia. At 14 he left home for Kibbutz Hulda and changed his surname to Oz. After army service he studied philosophy and Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

His first book, the story collection Where the Jackals Howl, came out in 1965, and the novel My Michael followed in 1968. He published 40 books, and his work was translated into about 45 languages. His memoir A Tale of Love and Darkness described his childhood and his mother's death.

Oz married Nily Zuckerman in 1960, and they had 3 children. The family moved from Hulda to Arad in 1986, and he taught at Ben-Gurion University from 1987 to 2014. From 1967 he supported a two-state solution, and he helped found Peace Now.

In 2014 he moved to Tel Aviv. He died of cancer on 28 December 2018 and was buried at Kibbutz Hulda. In 2021 his daughter Galia accused him of abuse in a memoir, and other family members denied the claims.