Amos Kenan (1927-2009) was an author, translator, publisher, painter, sculptor, and playwright. In the days before the State of Israel was established, Kenan fought in the Lehi Jewish resistance organisation. Later, after the founding of Israel, he was given Uzi and Co., a weekly satirical column in Israeli broadsheet, Haaretz, where he regularly published biting columns, criticising both the establishment and Israel’s then-ruling party, Mapai (later, the Israeli Labour Party.) In the 1950s, Kenan was sacked from Haaretz after he had been suspected of planting a bomb at the home of then-Transport Secretary, David-Zvi Pinkas MP in protest of an amendment forcing car owners to still their engines on a Saturday as a petrol-saving measure. Kenan was released after the judge chose to accept his version of events whereby, he had shown up at the cabinet minister’s home after receiving an anonymous tip that “something interesting was about to go down.” Following his dismissal from Haaretz, Kenan moved to Paris. Whilst there, he began writing for weekly magazine, HaOlam HaZeh (‘this world’). Following his return to Israel, he started to write for daily newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, where he would stay on for many years to come.
Kenan’s most successful novel was The Road to Ein Harod. The film adaptation, titled Doomsday and directed by Doron Eran, based on a script Kenan had penned, came out in 1990. In 1965, Kenan and Uri Zohar co-wrote the script to the latter’s avantgarde, experimental film, Hole in the Moon. Kenan also had a guest starring role in Moshé Mizrahi’s The Customer of the Off Season (1970).
Kenan won scores of awards for his prolific body of work, including an honorary award from the French Ministry of Culture in 1975, the International Theatre Institute Award in 1995, and the Brenner Literature Prize in 1998. Kenan was married to literary scholar, Nurit Gertz and is the father of journalist, Shlomzion Kenan and singer-songwriter, Rona Kenan.
