Fima [Paperback]

Amos Oz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 5, 1994

Fima’s life in Jerusalem always manages to become enmeshed in the mundane. With wit and storytelling mastery, Oz portrays a man - and a generation - that has dreams but does nothing. Named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Translated by Nicholas de Lange. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The Israeli author's stirring chronicle of one man's emotional disintegration delves into basic issues of Jewish history.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In Oz's new novel (after To Know a Woman , LJ 2/1/91), brilliant, pathetic, naive, dyspeptic Efraim (Fima) Nisan wanders through his Jerusalem life like an irritating shopper in a department store. Fima published a highly regarded book of poems in his salad days but has since lapsed into a dreary existence of intellectual and political quarreling; his brilliance gets on everyone's nerves almost as much as his inability to manage his life properly. He now works as a receptionist at a gynecological clinic and has puzzling affairs with women whose husbands have lost interest in them. Throughout the book, Fima makes plans to see a Jean Gabin film, but when he finally gets to the theater, it has come and gone. Oz uses his protagonist's arguments and fantasies of becoming prime minister to convey the confused and confusing mixture of political and personal life in his homeland. A fine work by one of Israel's best writers.
- Harold Augenbraum, Mercantile Lib., New York
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (December 5, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0156001438
• ISBN-13: 978-0156001434
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #191,570 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Prophet Fima and the end of Israel's Left, October 26, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Fima (Paperback)

Fima the clown, father of no one but an abortion, finds himself fathering(grandfathering) a sickly albino child with coke bottle glasses and capable of only a botched sacrifice, is forced to ponder- is this child the new Israel, the Israel of the Left? The Israel fathered by American and European intellectualism? This child that is not Israel's child, is this all that is set to inherit the success of the fathers who scrambled and built the nation? Fima who is so close in age to Israel itself is paralyzed and inept, and worst of all aware of it. Perhaps most interesting of the subjects addressed in the novel is that of abortion. Although there is an attempt to portray with some realism the subject and emotion of abortion, it is the symbolism of the defeated Israel, the Israel that might have been, that is carried most successfully in the material. Not that this weakens the novel, it just carries the reader away from the personal and to the national. Published in 1991, Oz predicted correctly that a peace must be reached, but that it would have to be the butchers and the gangsters who broker it.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars food for thought and another great book about Israel, December 5, 2006

By 

Aleksandra Nita-Lazar (MD, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fima (Paperback)

There are many people who suggest that Amos Oz is actually a political activist, not a writer. In fact, I think he is both. He has very clear political views (and, incidentally, I completely agree with him and admire him for them) and is a very skilled writer, who has good ideas for fiction books and is able to lay them out in very transparent prose, which makes the result infallibly a pleasure to read. And not only a pleasure, but a food for thought.

"Fima" is a book where at least two planes are immediately discernible. They are in agreement with the "double identity" of the author - one is a great critical view of Israel's political situation, with an acute analysis of nearly every fraction and orientation, the media, the traditions, the language; the second one is a great portrait of the main character, Efraim (Fima) Nisan who expresses all the layers of the first plane. Probably one of the greater protagonists in the contemporary literature, Fima has a complex personality, which makes him rather difficult to deal with. Difficult for his friends and family as well as for the reader - he is not easy to classify in any way, he is neither a hero nor a villain... If anything, he might be called an anti-hero of our times.

A middle-aged man, Fima lives alone in an apartment in Jerusalem. He is divorced, practically lives off his father, who owns a successful cosmetics factory and at every visit slips some money into Fima's pocket. Although he missed nothing in life, being from a well- off family and having received a solid education in humanities, Fima cannot be called successful himself. At least not in the American sense of the word. I cannot blame the American readers who wrote the reviews below for perceiving him as a loser - by their standards he is one. He works at the reception desk in the gynecological clinic. Sometimes he does not show up to work at all. From time to time he writes an article to a magazine, mostly expressing his political views, proof- reads the scientific papers of his friends - professors, and helps the nurse at the clinic with more difficult crossword clues. Intelectually, he is missing nothing. Still, he is absolutely lost in his relations with people, in the daily life, a mess of animated and unanimated surroundings, he takes things as they come but does nothing with them. He ponders on every detail, every smallest event cause him to stop on his way or change completely the course of his day. Everything can be a beginning of a small philosophical treatise.

Oz puts in Fima's mouth the criticism of Israeli political course, the never ending war with the Arabs, which are probably his own views, but being uttered by Fima, an absolutely passive being, who does absolutely nothing to change anything (in fact, he is an emotional parasite), they become a criticism of the Israeli left as well. In fact, I know a lot of people who opposed the system in exactly the same way as Fima does, by passive resistance and this helped them to stay sane and support the change when it came, therefore they are not completely useless. Nevertheless, someone else had to initiate the change.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fima, a symbol of unfulfilled promise in the state of Israel, July 8, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Fima (Paperback)

Amos Oz's "Fima" as translated by Nicholas de Lange is the story of Efraim Nison, son of a cosmetics manufacturing industrialist, and an intellectual and poet whose life never quite gets off the ground. He spends half his time working as a lowly receptionist in a clinic and the other half struggling to stay in one piece, if not boring his friends to death pontificating about the dismal state of politics prevailing in the modern state of Israel. He engages his family and friends but is succoured by them. His relationships with various women including his ex-wife are also frankly ludicrous. But Efraim's incoherent and wasted life cannot be interpreted as anything other than Oz's metaphor for the moribund state of Israel's moral authority after securing its own nationhood. He questions the hardline Jewish approach to its Arab neighbours today by drawing parallels with the mentality of the Nazis in the 30s and 40s. The lurking blood hound in man is humourously but no less chillingly portrayed in the episode with the cockroach. Dimi's shattering confession to Efraim about the dog is equally poignant. Oz, though cynical about the lasting effects of positive action on future generations, ends on a quietly optimistic note. "Fima" isn't exactly an easy book to digest. The symbolism is a little heavyhanded in parts, but the undeniable sense of humour in Oz's writing carries the book. Oz is in fine form for most of the way but gets distracted and loses focus towards the last third. Still, "Fima" makes an intellectually stimulating read and is definitely worth checking out.