Liebe und Finsternis

The poet Amos Oz is considered one of the great voices of Israeli literature and one of the most important authors of the present day.  During the course of his forty years of literary creativity he has written several novels, as well as a large number of stories and essays. He is a masterly portrayer of the way human beings behave, filled with a passionate political engagement. The jury of the Goethe Prize said the following about his work: “Through his literature, Amos Oz manages to convey a profound sense of humanity that overcomes all constraints, a sense of moral values and of belonging together, and this to readers from all parts of the world.” 

Oz was born Amos Klausner in 1939 in Jerusalem. He grew up in an educated right-wing Zionist academic family that in 1917 fled from Wilna (at the time part of Poland) to Odessa, and from there emigrated to Palestine in 1939.  Two years after the death of his mother – at which time he was twelve years old – Amos Oz entered a kibbutz.  Here he took the name Oz (which is Hebrew for strength).  In 1967 Oz fought in the Six-Day War in a tank unit on Sinai, and in 1973 during the War of Yom Kippur, he fought on the Golan Heights. Since the Six-Day War he has been active in the Israeli peace movement and pro the building of a two-state solution in the Israeli-Palestine conflict.  He is co-founder and prominent representative of the peace movement schalom achschaw (Peace Now), founded in 1977, as well as the co-author of the Genf Initiative for a peaceful solution in the Near East.

A Ruhrtriennale production