Author Amos Oz, one of the Israel's most widely acclaimed writers and a pre-eminent voice in the country's embattled peace movement, died on Friday after a battle with cancer. He was 79.
His daughter, Fania Oz-Salzberger, announced her father's death on Twitter.
"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 those who loved him and he knew it to the end. May his good legacy continue to mend the world," she wrote.
Oz was known around the world for the dozens of novels, essays and prose he wrote about life in Israel. He won some of the literary world's most prestigious honors, including the Goethe Prize and the French Knight's Cross of the Legion D'Honneur, received honorary doctorates, and was a perennial candidate for the Nobel Prize in literature. His 2002 memoir "A Tale of Love and Darkness," which recounts his childhood in Jerusalem and his mother's suicide when he was 12, won him the Goethe Prize and other awards and was adapted into a film starring and directed by actress Natalie Portman.
Oz was born in Jerusalem in 1939, the son of immigrants from eastern Europe. As a teen he rebelled against his upbringing, looking to put behind his parents' world, which he felt glamorized Europe and the West, and instead was drawn to the young pioneers who built the early state.
"I secretly dreamed that one day they would take me away with them. And make me into a fighting nation too. That my life too would become a new song, a life as pure and straightforward and simple as a glass of water on a hot day," he wrote in his 2002 memoir.
Oz completed high school at Kibbutz Hulda in central Israel, and returned to the kibbutz after completing his mandatory military service in 1961. While working in the farming community's cotton fields, he published his first short stories.
"Elsewhere, Perhaps," his first novel and an examination of relationships on a fictional kibbutz, was published in 1966.
After earning a degree in literature from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, he spent 25 years on the kibbutz, dividing his time between writing, farming and teaching at the community's high school, according to his website.
As a reserves soldier in a tank unit, Oz fought in the 1967 Six-Day War and 1973 Yom Kippur War.
In a career spanning half a century, Oz published over 35 books, including 13 novels, children's books and collections of short stories. He penned hundreds of articles on literary and political topics. His works have been translated into more than 40 languages.
Among his works are "In the Land of Israel," which chronicles his travels and interviews with people through Israel and the West Bank in the 1980s about the country's past and future, and "My Michael," a novel about a troubled marriage in 1950s Jerusalem.
Oz was a leading voice in Israel's peace movement and a friend of former Prime Minister Shimon Peres, a legendary politician who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to reach a deal with the Palestinians. Oz frequently wrote essays and delivered lectures urging the country's leaders to establish a Palestinian state as part of a peace agreement with Israel.
In a 1998 interview, he lamented the deep divisions in Israeli society.
"We have not yet established the rules of the game in 50 years," he said. "You could hardly get two Israelis to agree on the kind of Israel they want."
In a 2001 interview with The Associated Press, Oz said Israel must wean itself from the view that the West Bank and Gaza are assets to be traded for peace and instead they should just be given away.
"I think today that Israel should draw its own borders, withdraw to them, and if needed defend them," Oz said. "If we're going to fight, Israel without Nablus and Gaza is stronger than with Nablus and Gaza. Stronger, more unified, more just."
He was among the founders of Peace Now and was a leading voice in the 2003 "Geneva Initiative," an unofficial peace plan reached by leading Israelis and Palestinians. He was also a supporter and activist in the far-left Meretz party.
In recent years, he and fellow authors David Grossman and A.B. Yehoshua became pillars of the country's peace movement.
"We cannot become one happy family because we are not one, we are not happy, and we are not family. We are two unhappy families. We have to divide the house into two smaller next-door apartments," Oz told Deutsche Welle in an interview marking Israel's 70th anniversary this year.
"There is no point in even fantasizing that after 100 years of bloodshed and anger and conflict, Jews and Arabs will jump into a honeymoon bed and start making love not war."
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was in Brazil on Friday, remembered Oz as "one of the greatest authors" in Israeli history.
"He greatly contributed to the renewal of Hebrew literature, with which he deftly and emotionally expressed important aspects of the Israeli experience," he said.
"Even though we had differences of opinion in many areas, I greatly appreciate his contributions to the Hebrew language and the renewal of Hebrew literature. His words and his writings will continue to accompany us for many years."
President Reuven Rivlin tweeted: "A story of love and light and now great darkness."
The European Union's delegation to Israel wrote: "We are mourning the passing of Amos Oz, a wonderful Israeli poet and novelist, a towering voice for peace. May his memory be a blessing."
