The Amos Oz Reader [Paperback]

Amos Oz (Author), Prof. Nitza Ben Dov (Editor), Nicholas de Lange (Translator), Robert Alter (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 14, 2009

The Reader draws on Oz’s entire body of work, loosely grouped into four themes: the kibbutz, the city of Jerusalem, the idea of a "promised land," and his own life story. Included are excerpts from his celebrated novels, among them Where the Jackals Howl, A Perfect Peace, My Michael, Fima, Black Box, and To Know a Woman. Nonfiction is represented by selections from Under This Blazing Light, The Slopes of Lebanon, In the Land of Israel, and Oz’s masterpiece, A Tale of Love and Darkness. Robert Alter, a noted Hebrew scholar and translator, has provided an illuminating introduction.

(20090315)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

The son of a doomed storytelling mother and a citizen of a nation conceived as a lifeboat in a sea of genocide become a state that engenders statelessness, celebrated Israeli writer Oz is acutely sensitive to the paradoxes of language and the imagination. Bringing the same intensity of engagement and passion for poetic expression to fiction and nonfiction alike, he articulates the psychological complexity beneath the armor of Israel’s bellicose politics and the tragedy of its geopolitical predicament. This well-organized volume reaches back to the 1960s, mixes genres, and showcases Oz’s beautifully mythic prose. He vigorously dissects Israel’s history, kibbutz life, and the unique ambiance of Jerusalem, the “gloomy capital of an exuberant state.” Deeply attuned to “primeval hatred,” the emotional valence of nature, the conflict between community demands and private dreams and sorrows, he writes with great insight about “identity and identification.” Fluent in social matters, Oz finds meaning in the lives of individuals, each a cosmos of pain and love. Timely and illuminating. --Donna Seaman

Review

"Bringing the same intensity of engagement and passion for poetic expression to fiction and nonfiction alike, [Oz] articulates the psychological complexity beneath the armor of Israel's bellicose politics and the tragedy of its geopolitical predicament. This well-organized volume reaches back to the 1960s, mixes genres, and showcases Oz's beautifully mythic prose...Timely and illuminating."

-Donna Seaman, Booklist

 

 

"[T]his literary album contains striking snapshots by a gifted writer with a capacious heart and humane philosophy."

-Kirkus Reviews

 

" This well-organized volume reaches back to the 1960s, mixes genres, and showcases Oz’s beautifully mythic prose...Fluent in social matters, Oz finds meaning in the lives of individuals, each a cosmos of pain and love. Timely and illuminating."

(Donna Seaman Booklist )

"...this literary album contains striking snapshots by a gifted writer with a capacious heart and humane philosophy."

(Kirkus Reviews )

"...all [the selections] are representative of an intensely poetic writer who is concerned with contemporary life in a conflicted Israel. Oz''s subjects come out of his experiences of kibbutz living, war, and the struggles of individuals who are in conflict with Israeli society''s ideals. For readers wanting to sample the range of this important international writer, this collection will serve as a fine introduction."

(Library Journal )

"If you don''t know Oz, then start right here and become hooked."

(Buffalo News )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books; 1 edition (April 14, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0156035669
• ISBN-13: 978-0156035668
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #208,278 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #25 in Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > Jewish

More About the Author

AMOS OZ is a world-renowned novelist and essayist whose books include My Michael, To Know a Woman, Don't Call It Night, and The Same Sea. Most recently, his memoir, A Tale of Love and Darkness, received the Koret Jewish Book Award.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Journey Through the Land of Oz, June 12, 2009

By 

Daniel Bouskila "Rabbi Bouskila" (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Amos Oz Reader (Paperback)

We must keep in touch," Amos Oz said during my first meeting with him three years ago.

"With great pleasure," I answered, proceeding to ask him today's natural follow-up question: "What is your e-mail address?"

He looked at me with his charming smile and responded: "I don't have an e-mail."

Amos Oz, Israel's best-known and most translated author, has penned 33 books -- including novels, novellas and short stories -- along with more than 400 articles on literature and Israeli politics. I use the word "penned," because this gifted writer and outspoken political commentator accomplished this impressive literary output the old-fashioned way -- with pen and paper. Actually, with two different pens -- one blue, the other black.

"They each have a special purpose," he once told me. "One is to rage against the government and tell them to go to hell, and the other is to tell stories."

On May 4, Oz will turn 70. As part of the celebrations, a new English-language anthology, "The Amos Oz Reader"(Harcourt), was just released, offering a retrospective of some of the author's finest writing from both his pens.

It is a refreshing departure from the stereotypical out-of-context compilation, and credit for this goes to editor Nitza Ben-Dov, a professor of Hebrew and comparative literature at Haifa University. Ben-Dov has creatively grouped Oz's writings into four different themes: The Kibbutz, Jerusalem, the "Promised Land," and some of Oz's personal reflections, "In an Autobiographical Vein." In so doing she gives us a bird's-eye view of his life through the lenses of his writing.

Born May 4, 1939, in the Kerem Avraham neighborhood of Jerusalem, Amos Klausner grew up an only child in war-torn British Mandate Jerusalem during the years immediately leading up to the establishment of the State of Israel. His father, Yehuda Aryeh Klausner, was an intellectual whose politics were right-wing Revisionist Zionism. His mother, Fania Mussman, also an intellectual, suffered from severe depression. Their tiny Jerusalem apartment was filled with thousands of books, and Amos grew up in a milieu that included weekly Shabbat afternoon visits with his great uncle, professor Joseph Klausner, and often with Klausner's neighbor and arch rival, the great writer S.Y. Agnon.

In 1952, Amos's mother committed suicide at the age of 38. Two years later, just 14 1/2 years old, Amos Klausner left Jerusalem for Kibbutz Hulda, leaving behind his father and his family name, renaming himself "Oz" (which means "strength"), and rejecting his father's Revisionist Zionism in favor of left-wing, Socialist Zionism. This biography continues to shape and inform much of Oz's writings.

The "Kibbutz" section of the anthology features an excerpt from his first novel, "Elsewhere, Perhaps" (1966), where he explores the complex fine line between personal and communal life on the kibbutz, as well as the often-blurred line between kibbutz idealism and petty human behavior typical of any society.

Oz's most famous novel, "My Michael" (1968), is the first exposure we have to his dark view of the city of his childhood, Jerusalem. The "Jerusalem" section includes a substantial excerpt from "My Michael," titled "It's Cold in This Jerusalem of Yours," where the narrator, the depressed Hannah Gonen, describes the city as "a landscape pregnant with suppressed violence."

One of Israel's most vocal political journalists and peace activists, Oz's other pen is well represented in the "Promised Land" section of the anthology, in which we encounter Oz's liberal Zionism, his understandings of the terms "Jewish" and "Zionist," his disdain for right-wing extremism and his vision of what Israel potentially can be.

The section "In An Autobiographical Vein" features a chapter from "A Tale of Love and Darkness," titled "My Mother Was Thirty-eight When She Died." In 2003, Oz openly confronted the most traumatic event of his childhood, the suicide of his mother. With the publication of the quasi-memoir, quasi-autobiographical "A Tale of Love and Darkness," readers were finally able to journey with Oz through the trauma and pain of his loss.

As Amos Oz celebrates his 70th birthday, the State of Israel celebrates its 61st year of independence. Oz recently said, "being an Israeli at 70 is like being an American who is 250 years old. I saw the Boston Tea Party and met both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln."

While Oz's analogy about his age is sharp and witty, it risks painting an inaccurate image of the Israel and the Israeli that he portrays in his books. The "George Washingtons and Abraham Lincolns" of Israel are not characters in Oz's novels, and the "Boston Tea Parties" of Israel are at best the background to his plots. Amos Oz's Israel is not the epic Israel and larger than life Israeli one finds in Leon Uris's "Exodus" or Herman Wouk's "The Hope." Instead, he presents his readers with portraits of small, everyday people in provincial places within Israel. In fact, almost half of Oz's books are set in the one square mile of Kerem Avraham, the small Jerusalem neighborhood where he was born. And when we do meet Israel's political leaders or confront the complex issues surrounding the establishment of Israel, Israel's military campaigns, or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- as expressed in Oz's political essays -- one finds an Israel void of apologetic government rhetoric or simplistic one-sided arguments.

A week after our first meeting, I opened my mailbox and found an "old school" air-mail envelope adorned with a red, white and blue border. Inside was a personal letter on plain white paper, written in black pen.

Even without e-mail, Amos and I have kept in touch ever since.

Daniel Bouskila is the rabbi of Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel. You can read his blog at [...]

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Work of genius from the land of Israel, May 6, 2009

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Amos Oz Reader (Paperback)

Amos Oz will be this year, 2009, seventy. He has been a recognized and highly praised writer now for close to forty- five years. Throughout most of his career his greatest literary achievements were taken to be his novels, beginning with 'My Michael'. But Oz also has been a public intellectual of great weight in Israel, and his non- fiction books perhaps most notably 'In the Land of Israel' are major depictions of the Israeli reality. However in 2003 there appeared a work of such overwhelming power and beauty , that it is today considered by most readers as Oz's masterpiece. This is the autobiographical work 'A Tale of Love and Darkness'.
This present anthology contains a selection from the memoir, from a number of Oz's novels, stories and essays. It is possible to quarrel with some of the specific selections but on the whole they give a very clear sense of Oz's writing. The book is organized in four large sections, one on writings centered on the Kibbutz, another on writings centered in Jerusalem, a third on ' the Promised Land' and a fourth on autobiographical writings.
There is a long and profound introduction by Robert Alter which makes an overall reading of Oz's work. One of the central themes here is the theme of contesting with being hedged in, enclosed , imprisoned , surrounded as Israel has been in relation to its most frequently hostile neighbors.
The works are translated by Nicholas de Lange who is a great master of the trade. They do express a great deal of the special beauty of Oz's prose which in Hebrew can be poetically overwhelming.
For readers who know Amos Oz's work this Anthology will provide an opportunity to see much of it in perspective. For those who do not know his work, this Anthology provides an opportunity to make acquaintance with a major writer.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, February 10, 2010

By 

Donald L. Fink - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Amos Oz Reader (Paperback)

This is a wonderful collection of fiction, non-fiction, and autobiography by a practicing humanist that has never lost perspective in spite of deep involvment with the issues of his country and the times.