Amos Oz was an Israeli author whose works garnered widespread acclaim and translation. His writing often delved into the complexities of Israeli society and Jewish identity. Oz explored human relationships and moral dilemmas with a penetrating insight into the human psyche. His literary style was known for its elegance and its ability to capture the essence of the subjects he examined.
Exploring themes such as the kibbutz, Jerusalem, the concept of a "promised land," and the author's life, this collection features excerpts from Amos Oz's celebrated novels and significant nonfiction works. Included are selections from titles like Where the Jackals Howl and A Tale of Love and Darkness. The compilation is enriched by an insightful introduction from Robert Alter, a distinguished Hebrew scholar and translator, offering readers a deeper understanding of Oz's literary contributions and the cultural context of his writings.
Exploring the profound influence of S. Y. Agnon, this collection features Amos Oz's reflections on Agnon's literary genius and its significance in Hebrew literature. Oz delves into Agnon's themes of wonder about God, submerged eroticism, and his engagement with historical Hebrew texts. The essays reveal Oz's interpretations of Agnon's ideology and poetics, showcasing a dialogue between two great writers and offering readers a deeper understanding of Agnon's impact on contemporary literature.
"This book consists of six conversations between Amos Oz and Shira Hadad, who worked closely with Oz as the editor of his novel Judas. The interviews, which took place toward the end of Oz's life, about a decade after the publication of his memoir A Tale of Love and Darkness, capture the writer's thoughts and opinions on many of the subjects that occupied him throughout his life and career, including writing and creation, guilt and love, death and the afterlife. In the first interview, "A Heart Pierced by an Arrow," Oz discusses how he became a writer, along with his writing process and its attendant challenges. "Sometimes" explores Oz's reflections on men, women, and relationships across his experience and work. "A Room of Your Own" sketches his development as a writer on the kibbutz and his eventual decision to leave. In "When Someone Beats up Your Child," Oz discusses the critical reception of his work, and in "What No Writer Can Do" he describes his experience teaching literature, including his thoughts on contemporary modes of literary instruction. In the concluding piece, "The Lights Have Been Changing Without Us for a Long Time," he reflects on other writers and on changes he has observed in himself and others over time. The title comes from a passage in the first interview: Oz says, "What makes an apple? Water, earth, sun, an apple tree, and a bit of fertilizer. But it doesn't look like any of those things. It's made of them but it is not like them. That's how a story is: it certainly is made up of the sum of encounters and experiences and listening.""-- Provided by publisher
Tragic, comic and incomparable: an autobiographical epic and a comedie humaine for our times, which is both the portrait of an artist and the story of the birth of a nation, spanning several generations and moving with them from Russia, Lithuania, the Ukraine, to Jerusalem. Love and darkness are just two of the powerful forces that run through Amos Oz's extraordinary, moving story. He takes us on a seductive journey through his childhood and adolescence, along Jerusalem's wartorn streets in the 1940s and '50s, and into the infernal marriage of two kind, well-meaning people: his fussy, logical father, and his dreamy, romantic mother. Caught between them is one small boy with the weight of generations on his shoulders. And at the tragic heart of the story is the suicide of his mother, when Amos was twelve-and-a-half years old. Oz's story dives into 120 year of family history and paradox, the saga of a Jewish love-hate affair with Europe that sweeps from Vilna and Odessa, via Poland and Prague, to Israel. Farce and heartbreak, history and humanity make up this magical portrait of the artist who saw the birth of a nation, and came through its turbulent life as well as his own. over.
“An exemplary instance of a writer using his craft to come to grips with what is happening politically and to illuminate certain aspects of Israeli society that have generally been concealed by polemical formulas.” — The New York TimesNotebook in hand, Amos Oz traveled throughout Israel and the West Bank in the early 1980s to talk with workers, soldiers, religious zealots, aging pioneers, new immigrants, desperate Arabs, and visionaries, asking them questions about Israel’s past, present, and future. What he heard is set down here in those distinctive voices, alongside Oz’s observations and reflections. A classic insider’s view of a land whose complex past and troubled present make for an uncertain future.“Oz’s vignettes . . . wondrously re-create whole worlds with an economy of words.” — Philadelphia Inquirer
The Kibbutz of Metsudat Ram lies in the valley of Jordan, close to the border. Old and young, happy and discontented, the settlers go about their lives as the artillery rumbles in the distance and the war planes shriek overhead. Among them are Reuven, the school teacher whose true calling is poetry, his teenaged daughter, the capricious Noga, and Ezra, the Kibbutz's truck-driver. As the seasons pass, so too do storms of love and passion, conflict and misunderstanding, gossip and scandal - all threatening to tear apart a community held together by necessity and idealism.
'Concise, evocative... Dear Zealots is not just a brilliant book of thoughts and ideas - it is a depiction of the struggle of one man who, for decades, has insisted on keeping a sharp, strident and lucid perspective in the face of chaos and at times of madness' David Grossman, winner of the Man Booker International Prize This essential collection of three new essays was written out of a sense of urgency, concern, and a belief that a better future is still possible. It touches on the universal nature of fanaticism and its possible cures; the Jewish roots of humanism and the need for a secular pride in Israel; and the geopolitical standing of Israel in the wider Middle East and internationally. Amos Oz boldly puts forward his case for a two-state solution in what he calls 'a question of life and death for the State of Israel'. Wise, provocative, moving and inspiring, these essays illuminate the argument over Israeli, Jewish and human existence, shedding a clear and surprising light on vital political and historical issues, and daring to offer new ways out of a reality that appears to be closed down.
'On the kibbutz it's hard to know. We're all supposed to be friends but very few really are' Ariella, unhappy in love, confides in the woman whose husband she stole. Nahum, a devoted father, can't find the words to challenge his daughter's promiscuous lover. The old idealists deplore the apathy of the young, while the young are so used to kibbutz life that they can't work out if they're impassioned or indifferent. And amid this group of people unwilling and unable to say what they mean, Martin attempts to teach Esperanto.
In these essays, Amos Oz brings his experience as novelist, teacher and critic to bear on the different ways in which diverse writers enter into contact with the reader - by wooing them or by shock tactics. He analyzes writers such as Chekoh, Kafka, Agnon, Garcia Marques, and Raymond Carver.
