This is a very great writer who is going. He had signed novels but also essays, and life stories. His daughter, Fania-Oz Salzberger has announced on Twitter: the israeli writer Amos Oz, co-founder of the movement Peace now, died of cancer at the age of 79 years. “To those who love him, thank you,” she wrote.

Amos Oz was born in Jerusalem in 1939. Since a first international success with her novel My Michael (published in France by Calmann-Lévy, translated from the Hebrew by Rina Sinks), it has established itself as the israeli writer, the most important of his generation, with David Grossman. He has received numerous literary prizes and awards around the world, including the prix Femina foreign to The black Box . In 2004, A tale of love and darkness earned him a popular success, unpublished. The essence of his work is available in French, editions Gallimard, translated by Sylvie Cohen. He was the recipient of numerous international awards, such as Kafka or the Prince of Asturias prize.

his Acclaimed debut as “the Camus of israel”, the writer, a fervent supporter of peace with the Palestinians, denounced in recent years the policy of Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, protesting against what he called”extremism growing” of the government.

In A tale of love and darkness (translated from Hebrew by Sylvie Cohen), the writer recalls his childhood in Kerem Avraham, a poor neighbourhood of Jerusalem, and the trauma of the death of his mother, who commits suicide when he is a teenager. At the age of fifteen years he left his father to go live in a kibbutz. Several years later, became a novelist, he made a long trip to Europe to find her roots. He received the prix France Culture.

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In his work, there was a particular book written with her daughter, it was the Jews by the words (Gallimard). They said this: “The authors are a father and his daughter. One is a writer and specialist of literature, the other a historian. We never stopped to discuss and debate themes related to this book since the one of us two was three years old. Our collaboration does not deserve an explanation. The best way to present your work in a team is to clarify from the outset what was said in this essay. It posits that the jewish history and the jewish people form a continuity no other comparable, that is neither ethnic nor political. Our history certainly has lineages of this nature, but they do not form the main arteries. Instead, the genealogy of national and cultural identity of the Jews has always depended on the intergenerational transmission of verbal content. Here it is a question of religion, of course, but, still more effective, of texts. The texts are indeed available for a long time in written form. Tellingly, the controversy enrolled in them from the start. In what it has of better, the reverence jewish is accompanied by irreverence, biting. In what it has of better, the adequacy jewish hue of a review so scathing, sometimes funny. While the scholarship has great importance, the family business count even more. These two points of support tend to overlap. Fathers, mothers, masters. Sons, daughters, students. Text, question, debate. God, we know nothing about it, but the continuity of jewish was always paved with words.”

Amos Oz had also written to the youth, Suddenly in the deep forest (illustrations by Georg Hallensleben, always translated by Sylvie Cohen). It is summarized as follows: in a village in seemingly the same as the other, all the animals have suddenly disappeared. Braving the ban of their parents, two children decide to understand the reason of this departure and found their pets. They eventually discover flowing happy days in a wonderful secret garden, where they were attracted by a strange little boy once expelled from the village.

At the announcement of his death, the reactions have been many. They all say the sadness of losing a great writer and a great man. The death of Amos Oz’s “a loss for all of us and for the world,” said the spokesman of the israeli ministry of foreign Affairs Emmanuel Nahshon.

key dates in the israeli writer Amos Oz, who passed away Friday at the age of 79 years.

may 4, 1939: the birth of Amos Klausner in Jerusalem.

– 1954: joined at 15 years the kibbutz Hulda, in central Israel, and adopts the surname of Oz, meaning “strength, courage” in Hebrew.

– 1966: publishes his first book, “The Lands of the jackal”.

– June 1967: participates in the Six-day war in a tank unit.

– October 1973: participated in the war of Yom Kippur.

– 1978: co-founder of “Peace now” movement opposed to settlements in the palestinian Territories and advocating the reconciliation of the israeli-arab.

– 1987: published “The black Box”, crowned in France by the prix Femina the following year.

– 2003: published his autobiographical novel “A tale of love and darkness”, hailed as a major work of world literature.

– 2005: obtained the prestigious award of the Goethe of the city of Frankfurt for his work as a whole.