Most Popular Books by Amos Oz

Amos Oz, Israel''s preeminent writer, once again displays his mastery of human nature as he spins a rich tapestry of character and political intrigue out of the birth of Israel. The year is 1947, the last days of the British mandate in Palestine, and 12-year-old Proffy is accused of treason for his friendship with a kindly British soldier.

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"A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book" Translation of La-da''at ishah.

In The Silence of Heaven, the world renowned Israeli novelist Amos Oz introduces us to an extraordinary masterpiece of Hebrew literature that is just now appearing in English, S. Y. Agnon''s Only Yesterday. For Oz, Agnon is a treasure trove of a world no longer available to today''s writers, yet deeply meaningful for his wonderment about God, the submerged eroticism of his writing, and his juggling of multiple texts from the historical Hebrew religious library. This collection of Oz''s reflections on Agnon, which includes an essay on the essence of his ideology and poetics, is a rich interpretive work that shows how one great writer views another. Oz admires Agnon especially for his ability to invoke and visualize the religious world of the simple folk in Eastern European Jewry, looking back from the territorial context of the Zionist revival in Palestine. The tragedy of Agnon''s visions, Oz maintains, lies in his perspicacity. Long before the Holocaust, Agnon saw the degeneration, ruin, and end of Jewish culture in Eastern Europe. He knew, too, that the Zionist project was far from being a secure conquest and its champions far from being happy idealists. Oz explores these viewpoints in a series of thick readings that consider the tensions between faith and the shock of doubt, yearnings and revulsion, love and hate, and intimacy and disgust. Although Oz himself is interested in particular ideological questions, he has the subtle sensibility of a master of fiction and can detect every technical device in Agnon''s arsenal. With the verve of an excited reader, Oz dissects Agnon''s texts and subtexts in a passionate argument about the major themes of Hebrew literature. This book also tells much about Oz. It represents the other side of Oz''s book of reportage, In the Land of Israel, this time exploring the ideologies of Jewish identity not on the land but in texts of the modern classical heritage. The Silence of Heaven hence takes us on a remarkable journey into the minds of two major literary figures.

Fima muses about the human condition in the squalid confines of his bachelor flat, he is a man who dreams noble dreams but cannot master reality.

A snapshot of Israel and the West Bank in the 1980s, through the voices of its inhabitants, from the National Jewish Book Award–winning author of Judas. Notebook in hand, renowned author and onetime kibbutznik Amos Oz traveled throughout his homeland to talk with people—workers, soldiers, religious zealots, aging pioneers, desperate Arabs, visionaries—asking them questions about Israel''s past, present, and future. Observant or secular, rich or poor, native-born or new immigrant, they shared their points of view, memories, hopes, and fears, and Oz recorded them. What emerges is a distinctive portrait of a changing nation and a complex society, supplemented by Oz''s own observations and reflections, that reflects an insider''s view of a country still forming its own identity. In the Land of Israel is "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 Times) .

A provocative new story collection from the internationally celebrated author of A Tale of Love and Darkness

Unto Death contains two beautiful short novels linked by death and destruction. Crusade is set in 1096 - a year of sinister omens. Count Guillaume of Touron sets out on a crusade to Jerusalem and on the way he serves his God by killing any Jews he meets. But will the Count find the peace of mind he seeks when he faces the terrible realities of war in the Holy Land? In Late Love Oz portrays an elderly professor living alone in Tel Aviv, a man neither loving nor loved. His last mission is to expose the plight of his fellow Russian Jews and alert the people of Israel to the conspiracy that threatens them. But nobody wants to listen...

Amos Oz''s first book: a disturbing and beautiful collection of short stories about kibbutz life. Written in the ''60s, these eight stories convey the tension and intensity of feeling in the founding period of Israel, a brand-new state with an age-old history.

Set in 1950s Jerusalem, My Michael tells the story of a remote and intense woman named Hannah Gonen and her marriage to a decent but unremarkable man named Michael. As the years pass and Hannah''s tempestuous fantasy life encroaches upon reality, she feels increasingly estranged from him and the marriage gradually disintegrates. This novel is at once a haunting love story and a reflective portrait of place.

A young boy in modern-day Jerusalem trades away one possession after another, only to find something much more wonderful--his first love.

Novel of the microcosmic world of a kibbutz community located near the Jordanian frontier.

Roman.

"Perhaps most of the essays in this book are substitutes for stories that I have not managed to write," says Amos Oz in the preface to Under This Blazing Light. Published for the first time in English, this collection of essays reveals the personal and political thoughts of Israel''s most celebrated novelist. The essays in this volume put a unique perspective on the author''s own experiences and development, and reveal a complex and deeply human figure of practical political influence as well as of significant literary stature. Oz''s refreshing blend of skepticism and idealism will win for him new readers, while delighting those who will recognize here the qualities evident in his other writings. Relevant in light of recent developments in the Middle East, the topics covered include an examination of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a dispute between "Right and Right"; a look at the meaning of socialism in the Israeli context; reflections on the concept of "Homeland" and on the nature of the Kibbutz; and reflections on the character of Zionism. The essays also include portraits of several Jewish writers and thinkers whose ideas and themes in one way or another have proved influential or determinative for Amos Oz himself. Amos Oz is widely considered to be Israel''s most famous living writer. His fifteen books include My Michael, Touch the Water, Touch the Wind, In the Land of Israel, Black Box, To Know a Woman, and Fima. His work has been translated into twenty-nine languages, and he has received several major literary awards. He is currently a Professor of Modern Hebrew Literature at Ben-Gurion University.

A novelist father and his historian daughter describe the intricate relationship between Jews and words, backing up their theory that the Jewish experience is not dependent on historical heroes or rituals, but on the written word passed between generations.

Hailed by Publishers Weekly as "magnificent", this moving novel is set in Israel just before the Six-Day War, and describes life on a kibbutz, where the founders of Israel and their children struggle to come to terms with their land and with each other. "(Oz''s) strangest, riskiest, and richest novel".--Washington Post Book World.

Fiction and reality merge inside the mind of a famous Israeli author in this "hilarious and profound . . . slyly philosophical novel" ( Booklist). In this novel, Amos Oz offers a prismatic portrait of the storytelling impulse, with an extended glimpse inside the mind of a celebrated, unnamed Author. On a stiflingly hot night, the Author is in Tel Aviv to give a reading from his new book. As his attention wanders, he begins to invent lives for the strangers he sees around him: here, a self-styled cultural guru, Yakir Bar-Orian Zhitomirski; there, a love-starved professional reader, Rochele Reznik; to say nothing of Ricky the waitress, the real object of his desires. Reality and fiction blend in this ingenious, poignant work by the author of A Tale of Love and Darkness, a winner of the Koret Jewish Book Award. "A fable on themes of sex, death and writing pitched somewhere between the fictional universes of JM Coetzee and Milan Kundera." — The Guardian "The witty and melancholy recorder of his country''s brilliant sufficiencies. . . . Now Oz takes an equally witty, equally melancholy look at his role as a writer." — Los Angeles Times "From the prodigious Oz comes a delightfully elusive . . . story of imagination, talent and the transitory nature of fame. . . . Stamped with Oz''s charm and graceful skill in creating rich characters." — Publishers Weekly

Seven years after their divorce, Ilana breaks the bitter silence with a letter to Alex, a world-renowned authority on fanaticism, begging for help with their rebellious adolescent son, Boaz. One letter leads to another, and so evolves a correspondence between Ilana and Alex, Alex and Michel (Ilana''s Moroccan husband), Alex and his Mephistophelian Jerusalem lawyer—a correspondence between mother and father, stepfather and stepson, father and son, each pleading his or her own case. The grasping, lyrical, manipulative, loving Ilana has stirred things up. Now, her former husband and her present husband have become rivals not only for her loyalty but for her son''s as well.