Israeli author Amoz Oz, one of the country’s most widely acclaimed writers and a pre-eminent voice in its embattled peace movement, died on Friday after a battle with cancer, his family announced. 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 his lovers and knew it to the end. May his good legacy continue to amend the world,” she wrote.

Oz was known around the world for his dozens of novels, essays and prose about life in Israel, including a well-received memoir, “A Tale of Love and Darkness.” 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.

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 what he felt was his parents' world that 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.

He would complete high school at Kibbutz Hulda in central Israel, and return 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.

After earning a degree in literature from Jerusalem's Hebrew University, he would spend 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 reserve soldier in a tank unit, Oz fought in the 1967 and 1973 Mideast wars.

In a career spanning half a century, Oz published over 35 books, including 13 novels as well as children's books and collections of short stories, and hundreds of articles on literary and political topics. His works were translated into more than 40 languages.

His works included “In the Land of Israel,” a work that chronicled his travels and interviews with people throughout Israel and the West Bank in the 1980s about the country's past and future; “My Michael,” a novel about a troubled marriage in 1950s Jerusalem, and “A Tale of Love and Darkness.” That 2002 memoir, recounting his childhood in Jerusalem and the suicide of his mother when he was 12 years old, won him the Goethe Prize and other recognitions, and was adapted into a film starring Natalie Portman.

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 fields, 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.”

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin tweeted: “A story of love and light and now great darkness!”

Chinese readers are not unfamiliar with Oz. Since the 1990s, his works have been translated into Chinese, with the Chinese version of “My Michael,” a novel established his early fame, causing strong echoes in 1998.

Oz came to China twice for public activities. From August 26 to September 9, 2007, Oz attended a news press and a seminar on his works organized by the Institute of Foreign Literature at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

In June, 2016, he was invited to an international literary festival held by the Renmin University of China, which honored him as “the international literary figure of the year.” He also presented on the launch event of his short stories collection “Scenes from Village Life.”

(Top image: Israeli writer and novelist, Amos Oz in his home in Tel Aviv, Israel, March 8, 2013. /VCG Photo)