Amos Oz - A Tale of Love and Darkness: A Memoir, trans. from the Hebrew by Nicholas De Lange (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2004).

ISBN: 9780151008780 | 544 pages | ePub

Tragic, comic, and utterly honest, this extraordinary memoir is at once a great family saga and a magical self-portrait of a writer who witnessed the birth of a nation and lived through its turbulent history.

It is the story of a boy growing up in the war-torn Jerusalem of the forties and fifties, in a small apartment crowded with books in twelve languages and relatives speaking nearly as many. His mother and father, both wonderful people, were ill-suited to each other. When Oz was twelve and a half years old, his mother committed suicide, a tragedy that was to change his life. He leaves the constraints of the family and the community of dreamers, scholars, and failed businessmen and joins a kibbutz, changes his name, marries, has children, and finally becomes a writer as well as an active participant in the political life of Israel.

A story of clashing cultures and lives, of suffering and perseverance, of love and darkness.

Born in Jerusalem in 1939, Amos Oz is the author of numerous works of fiction and essays. His international awards include the Prix Femina, the Israel Prize, and the Frankfurt Peace Prize, and his books have been translated into more than thirty languages. He lives in Israel.

Reviews

"Detailed and beautiful . . . As he writes about himself and his family, Oz is also writing part of the history of the Jews . . . We are in the hands here of a capable, practiced seducer." -- Los Angeles Times

"This lyrical saga . . . succeeds both as a revelatory tale of the artist as young man and a gripping portrait of the young Jewish state itself." -- Miami Herald