Amos Oz

Oz grew up in Jerusalem in a household of multilingual, bookish refugees from Europe; his mother, unable to bear her own depression and the family's strained finances, took her own life when he was twelve, a loss he did not write about directly until decades later. At fourteen he left the city to join Kibbutz Hulda, changing his surname from Klausner to Oz and living communally for over thirty years while beginning to write and eventually teach.

He fought in the 1967 and 1973 wars and became one of Israel's most prominent public voices for a two-state peace settlement, a position that drew hostility from Israeli nationalists and Palestinian rejectionists alike but never quieted him. A Tale of Love and Darkness (2002) finally confronted his mother's death directly, weaving it into a sweeping account of his Jerusalem childhood and the state's founding.

He won Israel's most prestigious literary prizes and was frequently mentioned as a Nobel contender, dying of cancer in 2018.