Judas - Amos Oz

  

A fitting end to the career - and life - of the greatest Israeli author (at least to my knowledge, and in my opinion). This was another book that I surprisingly found in our building's lobby, which was rather unexpected considering how few books by Israeli authors I've seen in stock in London bookshops over the years. 

Judas is a novel of secrets, mysteries, incomprehensions and unfulfilled hopes and desires. It oozes maturity and the wisdom of an old man permeates its pages, and I suspect that there is probably quite a bit of Oz in the reclusive Wald. 

A book that I decided to keep on my Billy bookshelf (despite being a rather large hardback), which is now starting to look decrepit itself and would probably deserve to be replaced.

A Tale of Love and Darkness - Amos Oz

  

I like Oz's novels, I like Oz's children books, and I was clearly bound to like his own autobiography. 

It's long, and that's undeniable. It also often repeats itself, but that's to be expected with a non-linear timeline for some 500-odd pages. Yet, it's fabulously written, and the history (both the capitalized version, and the family history) depicted in the book is obviously fascinating. I don't think I could have coped with 100 more finely printed pages, but man I'm glad that I've read this book. 

And perhaps I should watch Natalie Portman's movie version too...

A Perfect Peace – Amos Oz

A random book I picked up without knowing a thing about it (although knowing fully well how much I like Oz’s writing). A really enjoyable read, despite the fact that it took me a couple of weeks to finish it over the holidays (I’ll blame family and friends’ visits – and the consequent lack of quality “me time” – for that).

I always tell my students to read something by Oz or Yehoshua (in the case of the latter I normally refer to his novels, not his borderline senile newspaper columns) to prepare for classes on the Arab-Israeli conflict – they never listen, but at least I try – and A Perfect Peace, with its comments on the Six Day War and more generally on Israeli politics, will clearly be no exception.

The novel is insightful and ironic, in particular in its first half (which the author wrote much earlier than the second part), the comments on life in the kibbutz are deep and informative, and a number of the characters are particularly interesting (the relatively minor ones often more so than the central triangle of Yonatan, Rimona and Azariah). The second half of the novel, however, has an underlying sentimentally that I struggled with…

Panther in the Basement – Amos Oz

The first book by Amos Oz that I read. Started and finished it in a quiet room in the Louvre, on a day when entry was free, it was pouring outside, and I just had to kill time before flying out of Paris after a few days there.

Unlike Grossman’s books for young adults, this is a book about young adults, but not exclusively for them. It tells the story of a Palestine torn by the British-Zionist conflict, just before it started to be torn by the Arab-Israeli one, a time in which the Jewish were launching terrorist attacks because – as Ben M’Hidi teaches the viewers in The Battle of Algiers – terrorism is the weapon of the poor: “If we have your airplanes it would be a lot easier for us. Give us your bombers, and you can have our baskets”.

The entire book is written with an extremely delicate touch. Obviously, an adult reader (but probably, given the uniqueness of the historical moment and the way Israel has changed since, not even a young reader) cannot identify with the main character, but this doesn’t deter from the book, which remains a novel about a largely underexplored historical period and with quite a number of insightful comments.