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A Notable Book of the Year

“A rich symphony of humanity. . If Oz’s eye for detail is enviable, it is his magnanimity which raises him to the first rank of world authors.” — (UK)

At Tel-Kedar, a settlement in the Negev desert, the longtime love affair between Theo, a sixty-year-old civil engineer, and Noa, a young schoolteacher, is slowly disintegrating. When a pupil dies under difficult circumstances, the couple and the entire town are thrown into turmoil. Amos Oz explores with brilliant insight the possibilities — and limits — of love and tolerance.

“Vivid, convincing, and haunting.” —

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.

Fima lives in Jerusalem, but feels that he is in Jerusalem by mistake, that he ought to be somewhere else. In the course of his life he has had several love affairs, several ideas, has written a book of poems that aroused some expectations, has thought about the purpose of the universe and where the country has lost its way, has spun a detailed fantasy about founding a new political movement, has felt longings of one sort or another, and the constant desire to open a new chapter. And here he is now, in his early fifties, in this shabby flat on a gloomy wet morning, engaged in a humiliating struggle to release the corner of his shirt from the zipper of his fly. With rare wit, intimate knowledge of the human heart, and his usual storytelling mastery, Amos Oz portrays a man — and a generation that dreams noble dreams but does nothing.

“Countries need writers as their voices of conscience; few have them. Israel has Oz.” —

The year is 1947: the last days of the British mandate in Palestine. Twelve-year-old Proffy, indoctrinated by his patriotic father and a zealous Bible teacher, dreams of dying heroically in battle, fighting for the creation of a Jewish state. Then he meets and befriends a kindly British soldier who shares with Proffy a love of language and the Bible. Accused of treason for the friendship, Proffy must learn the true nature of loyalty and betrayal. Panther in the Basement is a rich tapestry of character and political intrigue set against the birth of modern Israel.

“Insightful, inventive, and lyrical.” —

“Oz’s strangest, riskiest, and richest novel.” —

Israel, just before the Six-Day War. On a kibbutz, the country’s founders and their children struggle to come to terms with their land and with each other. The messianic father exults in accomplishments that had once been only dreams; the son longs to establish an identity apart from his father; the fragile young wife is out of touch with reality; and the gifted and charismatic “outsider” seethes with emotion. Through the interplay of these brilliantly realized characters, Oz evokes a drama that is chillingly, strikingly universal.

“[Oz is] a peerless, imaginative chronicler of his country’s inner and outer transformations.” —(UK)

From the internationally acclaimed Israeli author, a unique novel in verse that will take its place among the great books of our time.

The Same Sea

Reminiscent of for the range of its voices, its earthy humor, and its poignancy, is heartbreaking and sensuous, filled with classical echoes and Biblical allusions. Oz at his very best.

"I wrote this book with everything I have. Language music, structure everything that I have. . This is the closest book I've written. Close to me, close to what I always wanted. . I went as far as I could. -Amos Oz

A generous imagination at work. [Oz's] language, for all of its sensuous imagery, has a careful and wise simplicity." — "New York Times Book Review" Situated only two miles from a hostile border, Amos Oz's fictional community of Metsudat Ram is a microcosm of the Israeli frontier kibbutz. There, held together by necessity and menace, the kibbutzniks share love and sorrow under the guns of their enemies and the eyes of history."Immensely enjoyable." — "Chicago Tribune Book World

"Sensuous prose and indelible imagery." — Three stories in which history and imagination intertwine to re-create the world of Jerusalem during the last days of the British Mandate. Refugees drawn to Jerusalem in search of safety are confronted by activists relentlessly preparing for an uprising, oblivious to the risks. Meanwhile, a wife abandons her husband, and a dying man longs for his departed lover. Among these characters lives a boy named Uri, a friend and confidant of several conspirators who love and humor him as he weaves in and out of all three stories. is "as complex, vivid, and uncompromising as Jerusalem itself" ().

"A profusion of delightful passages couched in unfailingly lovely language." — 1939. As the Nazis advance into Poland, a Jewish mathematician and watchmaker named Pomeranz escapes into the wintry forest, leaving behind his beautiful, intelligent wife, Stefa. After the war, having evaded the concentration camps, they begin to build new lives, Stefa in Stalin’s Russia and Pomeranz in Israel, where, as they move toward reunion, another war is brewing. An intricate tale of people seeking escape from a hostile world in thrillingly fantastical ways.　

As well as being one of Israel’s preeminent writers of fiction, Amos Oz was one of the first voices of conscience in Israel to advocate the creation of a Palestinian state and has been a leading figure of the Peace Now movement since 1977. This superb collection of essays offers Oz’s cogent views on Israel’s offensive into Lebanon in 1982; fanaticism of all stripes; the PLO; Israeli terrorism; the new militarism and the growing intolerance toward the Arab population in Israel; Jewish attitudes toward the Holocaust, and its misappropriation by the right and left alike; Claude Lanzmann’s film Shoah; the dream of Zionism and its failures; and much more.

In a village far away, deep in a valley, all the animals and birds disappeared some years ago. Only the rebellious young teacher and an old man talk about animals to the children, who have never seen such (mythical) creatures. Otherwise there’s a strange silence round the whole subject. One wretched, little boy has dreams of animals, begins to whoop like an owl, is regarded as an outcast, and eventually disappears.

A stubborn, brave girl called Maya and her friend Matti, are drawn to explore in the woods round the village. They know there are dangers beyond and that at night, Nehi the Mountain Demon comes down to the village. In a far-off cave, they come upon the vanished boy, content and self-sufficient. Eventually they find themselves in a beautiful garden paradise full of every kind of animal, bird and fish — the home of Nehi the Mountain Demon. The Demon is a pied piper figure who stole the animals from the village. He, too, was once a boy there, but he was different, mocked and reviled, treated as an outsider and outcast.

This is his terrible revenge, one which has punished him too, by removing him from society and friendship, and every few years he draws another child or two to join him in his fortress Eden, where he has trained the sheep to lie down with the wolves, and where predators are few. He lets the two children return to the village, telling them that one day, when people are less cruel and his desire for vengeance has crumbled, perhaps the animals might come back…

“Oz lifts the veil on kibbutz existence without palaver. His pinpoint descriptions are pared to perfection. . His people twitch with life.” —

In , Amos Oz returns to the kibbutz of the late 1950s, the time and place where his writing began. These eight interconnected stories, set in the fictitious Kibbutz Yekhat, draw masterly profiles of idealistic men and women enduring personal hardships in the shadow of one of the greatest collective dreams of the twentieth century.

A devoted father who fails to challenge his daughter’s lover, an old friend, a man his own age; an elderly gardener who carries on his shoulders the sorrows of the world; a woman writing poignant letters to her husband’s mistress — amid this motley group of people, a man named Martin attempts to teach everyone Esperanto.

Each of these stories is a luminous human and literary study; together they offer an eloquent portrait of an idea and of a charged and fascinating epoch. Amos Oz at home. And at his best.