The Hebrew author Amos Oz (born Amos Klausner)—an essayist, professor of literature at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, and active contributor to Israeli and international media on literary and political matters—is best known for his internationally regarded prose fiction. He was born in Jerusalem during the British Mandate period and at the age of 15 left for Kibbutz Hulda, where he lived for three decades before moving in 1986 to the southern Israeli city of Arad. His first collection of short stories, Artsot ha-tan [Where the Jackals Howl] was published in 1965. His novels and stories have been translated into over thirty languages and have garnered worldwide acclaim and prestigious literary prizes, including the French Légion d'Honneur (1997), the German Heinrich Heine Prize (2008), the Italian Primo Levi Prize (2008), the National Jewish Book Award (2006) and every major Israeli literary prize, among them the Bialik Prize (1986), the Israel Prize (1998), and the Jerusalem-Agnon Prize (2006). An advocate of peace with the Palestinians through a two-state solution and a mainstay of the Zionist Left in Israel, Oz was a founder of the peace organization Shalom Achshav (Peace Now) and has been its chief spokesperson.