A writer and a professor, Amos Oz was born in 1939, when Jerusalem was administered by the United Kingdom. He soon became independent from his family and went to live at a kibbutz when he was 15 years old. At the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, he studied philosophy and letters and since then has divided his time between writing and teaching. A Visiting Fellow at Oxford University, he holds the Chair of Hebrew Literature at Ben Gurion University (Beer-Sheva, Israel), where he is currently a professor of Modern Hebrew Literature. Regarded by critics as one of the main authors of contemporary Hebrew fiction, his work has been translated into over thirty languages. His novels and essays delve into the tensions suffered by both the Israeli and Palestinian societies.
