His death was announced by his daughter Fania Oz-Salzberger, who wrote on Twitter that he had died after a short battle with cancer, “in his sleep, peacefully.” She did not say where he died.
In recent years Oz had been living in Tel Aviv.
One of Israel’s most prolific writers and respected intellectuals, Oz began storytelling in his early 20s. He published more than a dozen novels, including “My Michael” and “Black Box,” as well as collections of short fiction, works of nonfiction and many essays. His work was translated into more than 35 languages.
His acclaimed memoir, “A Tale of Love and Darkness,” was first published in Hebrew in 2002 and became an international best-seller. A movie based on the book, directed by and starring Natalie Portman, was released in 2016.
Among a generation of native Israeli writers that included A.B. Yehoshua and David Grossman, Oz wrote richly in modern Hebrew. The revival of that ancient language was extolled by the founders of the state as a crucial element in forging a new Israeli identity.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described Oz as “one of the greatest authors” Israel has produced and said that he “deftly and emotionally expressed important aspects of the Israeli experience.”
His own soul was scored by early tragedy after his mother died by suicide when he was 12. Much of his writing revolved around intimate portraits of Israeli life laced with a sense of loss and melancholy.
“Without a wound,” he once said, “there is no author.”
Though a passionate voice for peace, Oz was not a pacifist and had no illusions about the hostile neighborhood in which Israel exists. He served in the military, fought in two wars as a reserve soldier in a tank unit and said it was sometimes necessary to use force in order to fight aggression, in the tradition of pragmatic Labor Zionism.
Soon after the 1967 Middle East war, in which Israel conquered the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, Oz began advocating for withdrawal and a two-state solution, meaning the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, long before the idea became mainstream. While many Israelis blame the Palestinians for the impasse in the peace process, dismissing the Palestinian leadership’s willingness or ability to reach a deal, Oz held Israeli leadership accountable.
He was born Amos Klausner in Jerusalem on May 4, 1939, and his early years were spent in an atmosphere that was both scholarly and militant. His father, Yehuda Arieh Klausner, a librarian, and his mother, Fania Mussman, had immigrated from Eastern Europe. They met in Jerusalem. Though polyglots themselves, they insisted that their son speak only Hebrew.
He completed his secondary education in Hulda and worked in the rolling farmland between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. The hardy, pioneering characters of the Socialist kibbutz movement would later inhabit some of his novels.
In Hulda, he met Nily Zuckerman. They married in 1960. She and their three children, Fania, Galia and Daniel, survive him, as do several grandchildren.
Oz won some of the literary world’s highest honors, including the Goethe Prize and the French Knight’s Cross of the Légion D’Honneur.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.