Scenes from Village Life [Hardcover]

Amos Oz (Author), Nicholas de Lange (Translator)

Book Description

Release date: October 18, 2011

“Informed by everything, weighed down by nothing, this is an exquisite work of art.” —The Scotsman

Strange things are happening in Tel Ilan, a century-old pioneer village. A disgruntled retired politician complains to his daughter that he hears the sound of digging at night. Could it be their tenant, that young Arab? But then the young Arab hears the digging sounds too. Where has the mayor’s wife gone, vanished without trace, her note saying “Don’t worry about me”? Around the village, the veneer of new wealth—gourmet restaurants, art galleries, a winery—barely conceals the scars of war and of past generations: disused air raid shelters, rusting farm tools, and trucks left wherever they stopped. Scenes from Village Life is a memorable novel-in-stories by the inimitable Amos Oz: a brilliant, unsettling glimpse of what goes on beneath the surface of everyday life.

Translated from the Hebrew by Nicholas de Lange

Editorial Reviews

Review

A "thought provoking collection... Filled with tension and allegory, Oz's perceptive tales explore the nuance and alienation of transitioning states."
--Booklist

 "Finely wrought... Oz writes characterizations that are subtle but surgically precise, rendering this work a powerfully understated treatment of an uneasy Israeli conscience."
-Publishers Weekly, starred "Highly recommended."
-Library Journal, starred

 

UK Praise for SCENES FROM VILLAGE LIFE:

 

"An impressive and very affecting achievement...These stories, in their humanity, may do more for Israel than any of the decisions we have been led to expect of its leaders in the months to come."
-New Statesman

 

"One of the most powerful books you will read about present-day Israel."
-Jewish Chronicle

About the Author

Amos Oz was born in Jerusalem in 1939. He is the author of fourteen novels and collections of short fiction, and numerous works of nonfiction. His acclaimed memoir A Tale of Love and Darkness was an international bestseller and recipient of the prestigious Goethe prize, as well as the National Jewish Book Award. Scenes from Village Life, a New York Times Notable Book, was awarded the Prix Méditerranée Étranger in 2010. He lives in Arad, Israel.

Nicholas de Lange is a professor at the University of Cambridge and a renowned translator. He has translated Amos Oz’s work since the 1960s.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1 edition (October 18, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0547483368
• ISBN-13: 978-0547483368
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #572,821 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Melnacholy elegy for Israel that was August 25, 2011

By Alan A. Elsner VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

This loosely-connected series of short stories by the Israeli master Amos Oz laments a world that has passed away. Set in the fictional village of Tel Ilan in the Hills of Menashe south and east of Haifa, the book seems to regret the passing of the "old Israel" built by the generations of socialist pioneers.

Each of the stories, and virtually all of the characters we meet, seem suffused by a mysterious melancholy. The village is lovely, with its old brick houses covered in flowering vines, its parks and farms -- but it is also decaying from within. At night, jackals in the surrounding hills yowl threateningly. Old people tread the streets living half in the present and half in the past. Middle-aged people long to escape but can't. Young people seek outlets for their loves and desires and find none. Meanwhile cynical developers are anxious to get hold of these lovely buildings to tear them down and build new villas for the nouveau riche while visitors from the city throng the streets and alleys of the village on weekends shopping in the new boutiques and snacking in the cafes that have sprung up to accommodate them.

Several stories seem to be meant to be understood allegorically. One long retired political lion of the left is still reliving the internal disputes of the past of a socialist party that no longer even exists. He spends his day growling at his daughter while trying to stave off dementia and thinks he hears the sounds of digging in his cellar at night. Eventually he infects two other people living in the house with that same delusion. What does the digging and scratching signify? I suppose it's the slow hollowing out of the idealism that built the village in the first place.

This story entitled "Digging" includes the only Arab in the book, a student who has rented a garden shack from the owner and who does handyman work and chores in exchange for rent (an image that's a bit too obvious maybe). The student, Adel, and the old man, have a telling exchange. Both Jews and Arabs are unhappy, the student tells the old man, but in different ways. "Our unhappiness is partly our fault and partly your fault. But your unhappiness comes from your soul."

In another story, "Singing," a group of middle-aged villagers meet, as Israelis do, to sing the old songs of the Zionist movement. They have titles like, "Laugh oh laugh at all my dreams," "Once upon a time there were two roses," and "Again the song is going forth, again our day is weeping." (All real songs by the way). Someone interrupts the singing to announce an Israeli air raid against terrorists somewhere and the group bursts into political argument, before returning to the singing. The narrator of the story says, "We felt good sitting in a circle on a rainy, stormy night, singing old songs from the days when everything had seemed so clear and bright." Outside comes a rolling noise that could be thunder or perhaps it's the sound of the planes returning to base, but the singing momentarily drowns it out.

Oz is a brilliant and wise man who ought to win the Nobel Prize for literature -- except the smug Swedes will probably never give it to an Israeli. His "Tale of Love and Darkness" is one of the best books I have read ever.

This collection is not up to that standard. Sometimes the images and symbolism are heavy-handed and the stories seem to be both too light and too heavy to hold their encoded messages.

Having said that, Oz on an off day is still better than 99 percent of authors at their best.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant short perceptive vignettes by a great writer August 5, 2011

By Israel Drazin TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

Amos Oz is a great writer. He writes in Hebrew, and his books are translated into English. He is considered one of the top three Israeli writers. This book, which will be published on October 20, 2011 - I received as an advance reading copy - contains eight brilliant short, perceptive, thought-provoking, and somewhat disturbing vignettes, about sometimes surreal citizens of an Israeli village.

For example, in the first story Heirs, an unusual stranger, outlandishly dressed with bizarre behavior, arrives at the home of a troubled man and tells him that he would like to buy his very old mother's house, the house in which he and his mother are living. The son is conflicted. He wants and doesn't want to sell. He tells the man to leave. But the man ignores the order, enters the house, goes to the silent old woman's bedroom, and gets into bed with her, strokes and kisses her, and mummers softly, "Everything is going to be all right, dear lady. It's going to be lovely. We'll take care of everything." The son also undresses and gets into the bed with his quite old mother. Readers will ask: What is the significance of the bed scene? Why is the tale called Heirs in the plural when the old woman only has a single son?

Similarly, in the seventh story Singing a man of the village leaves the thirty-some villagers who came to a home to sing together. This is the home of a man and woman whose son committed suicide under their bed, and lay there dead for a day undiscovered. The husband hasn't gotten over the event, and sits on the side brooding while the others are singing. The visitor also suffers despair. He wanders upstairs, confused, without understanding why he is doing so, enters a bedroom, and thinks: "I had no further reason to turn my back on despair. So I got down on my hands and knees at the foot of the double bed and, rolling back the bedspread, tried to grope with the pale beam of my flashlight into the dark space underneath." Readers will enjoy reading the artistic descriptions of the events and wondering what is the significance of this man's act.

In the third vignette Digging we read about the interrelations of an old almost senile, very dissatisfied, fault-finding father; his good-looking, well-groomed daughter, a widow in her mid-forties, a teacher of literature in the village, who patiently cares for her father; and a young Arab student who is writing about relationships, who she allows to live in a hut on her property in exchange for help in repairing her house and property. Her father complains that he hears digging under the house at night. She is certain that he is imagining the noise and changes his medicine. Then the Arab boy asks her about the digging. She sleeps soundly and hears nothing. She decides she should stay up and listen, and she hears the digging as well. What is going on? What is Amos Oz telling us?

In summary, in these vignettes, Amos Oz explores the psyche of people in a small village, such as the puppy love of a seventeen year old boy for a short plump overworked librarian twice his age in Strangers, where the boy rubs up against the older woman, and the psychological and sociological consequences to the two of them. The story is called Strangers because of these consequences. But Oz gives us much more than a fascinating exploration of the mind-set of village people. These people are a mirror that reflects life outside of the village.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Aching with quiet, lonely mysteries of life August 2, 2011

By R. M. Peterson TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

The village is named Tel Ilan. It is a Jewish "pioneer village" settled over a century ago in a secluded valley somewhere in Israel. Until recently it was an agricultural village, a "forgotten backwater". But it has been discovered by the wealthy and cosmopolitan, who are buying up the old single-story houses, razing them, and replacing them with large villas. During the week it still is sleepy, but on weekends it bustles with life; lines of cars arrive in the village, and their passengers visit boutique wineries, art galleries, and stores selling Far Eastern furnishings, cheese, honey, and olives.

SCENES FROM VILLAGE LIFE contains seven sketches of life in Tel Ilan, ranging from 15 to 41 pages. A smarmy attorney makes overtures to an about 60-year-old man to help him move his aged mother into a nursing home so that the family homestead, which dates back to the original Jewish settlers, can be sold. A woman doctor meets the evening bus from Tel Aviv, expecting a visit from her nephew, a soldier in the army who has been invalided with a kidney problem, but he is not on the bus nor does she receive any message from him. The mayor receives a note at his office from his wife that reads "Don't worry about me"; after he goes home and she is not there, he wanders the village looking for her, to no avail. And four more such vignettes. Nothing much happens in any of them. But all are permeated with a vague disquiet, all feature lonely central characters, and all are simply and beautifully written.

There are only a few references to the Palestinian/Israeli, or Arab/Jew, conflict. One of them occurs when a cranky old former Member of the Knesset corners and interrogates the young Arab that the old man's daughter has allowed to live in an abandoned farm outbuilding on their property. The Arab student explains that he is working on a book comparing "you" and "us". As he sees it, both groups are unhappy. The old Jew sarcastically asks whether there are any differences between the two groups. The Arab calmly answers, "Our unhappiness is partly our fault and partly your fault. But your unhappiness comes from your soul. * * * Or from your heart. It's hard to know. It comes from you. From inside."

But it seems to me that SCENES FROM A VILLAGE LIFE is more about life in general than it is about the Israel of today. In other words, it seems to transcend the political conflicts of Israel. Amos Oz is now in his seventies. I doubt that this book could have been written by a much younger man. It is a book that aches with quiet, lonely mysteries of life.

The book ends with an eighth sketch, entitled "In a Faraway Place at Another Time", that is completely different in tone. It seemingly is from the early dawn or the post-apocalyptic twilight of human civilization. In juxtaposition with the seven relatively quiet scenes that had preceded it, it clearly constitutes a parable of some sort. What is the meaning? I will be thinking about that for some time to come.

Though not quite great, SCENES FROM A VILLAGE LIFE is good enough to merit five stars.