Amos Oz était un auteur israélien dont les œuvres ont obtenu une large reconnaissance et traduction. Son écriture explorait souvent les complexités de la société israélienne et de l'identité juive. Oz examinait les relations humaines et les dilemmes moraux avec une perspicacité pénétrante de la psyché humaine. Son style littéraire était réputé pour son élégance et sa capacité à capturer l'essence des sujets qu'il abordait.
L'écrivain évoque son enfance à Kerem Avraham, quartier pauvre de Jérusalem, et le traumatisme lié à la mort de sa mère qui se suicide alors qu'il est adolescent. A l'âge de quinze ans, il quitte un père distant pour aller vivre dans un kibboutz. Plusieurs années plus tard, devenu romancier, il effectue un long voyage en Europe pour retrouver ses racines.
Au début de la fondation du kibboutz, nous formions une grande famille. Bien sur, tout n'était pas rose, mais nous étions soudés. Le soir, on entonnait des mélodies entraînantes et des chansons nostalgiques jusque tard dans la nuit. On dormait dans des tentes et l'on entendait ceux qui parlaient pendant leur sommeil.» Ben Gourion est Premier ministre, et la société israélienne n'est déja plus la meme que du temps des fondateurs. A Yikhat comme ailleurs, on se débat avec les chagrins d'amour et les désirs irréalisables, mais dans un kibboutz, on n'est jamais seul... En huit nouvelles tragi-comiques qui se lisent comme un roman, Amos Oz scrute les passions et les faiblesses de l'etre humain. Il fait surgir un monde englouti et nous offre un grand livre sur les idéaux et la solitude.
«Bonjour Alec! Si tu n’as pas détruit cette lettre a l’instant meme ou tu as reconnu l’écriture sur l’enveloppe, c’est que ta curiosité est plus forte que ta haine ou que ta haine a besoin d’etre alimentée.» Ainsi commence la premiere lettre d’Ilana a son ex-mari, Alec, apres sept ans de silence. Il est devenu un intellectuel de renommée internationale et vit aux États-Unis. Elle s’est remariée a Michel Sommo, un juif sépharade religieux, et vit en Israël. Leur correspondance prend d’abord pour sujet Boaz, leur fils, une graine de voyou. Mais bien vite leurs échanges restituent leur vie passée : comme, apres une catastrophe aérienne, le contenu de la boîte noire. Amoz Oz construit un étonnant roman épistolaire sur la manipulation au sein des familles. Il dessine, a partir de l’histoire intime de trois personnages, un portrait de l’Israël contemporain.
Exploring themes such as the kibbutz, Jerusalem, the concept of a "promised land," and the author's life, this collection features excerpts from Amos Oz's celebrated novels and significant nonfiction works. Included are selections from titles like Where the Jackals Howl and A Tale of Love and Darkness. The compilation is enriched by an insightful introduction from Robert Alter, a distinguished Hebrew scholar and translator, offering readers a deeper understanding of Oz's literary contributions and the cultural context of his writings.
Exploring the profound influence of S. Y. Agnon, this collection features Amos Oz's reflections on Agnon's literary genius and its significance in Hebrew literature. Oz delves into Agnon's themes of wonder about God, submerged eroticism, and his engagement with historical Hebrew texts. The essays reveal Oz's interpretations of Agnon's ideology and poetics, showcasing a dialogue between two great writers and offering readers a deeper understanding of Agnon's impact on contemporary literature.
"This book consists of six conversations between Amos Oz and Shira Hadad, who worked closely with Oz as the editor of his novel Judas. The interviews, which took place toward the end of Oz's life, about a decade after the publication of his memoir A Tale of Love and Darkness, capture the writer's thoughts and opinions on many of the subjects that occupied him throughout his life and career, including writing and creation, guilt and love, death and the afterlife. In the first interview, "A Heart Pierced by an Arrow," Oz discusses how he became a writer, along with his writing process and its attendant challenges. "Sometimes" explores Oz's reflections on men, women, and relationships across his experience and work. "A Room of Your Own" sketches his development as a writer on the kibbutz and his eventual decision to leave. In "When Someone Beats up Your Child," Oz discusses the critical reception of his work, and in "What No Writer Can Do" he describes his experience teaching literature, including his thoughts on contemporary modes of literary instruction. In the concluding piece, "The Lights Have Been Changing Without Us for a Long Time," he reflects on other writers and on changes he has observed in himself and others over time. The title comes from a passage in the first interview: Oz says, "What makes an apple? Water, earth, sun, an apple tree, and a bit of fertilizer. But it doesn't look like any of those things. It's made of them but it is not like them. That's how a story is: it certainly is made up of the sum of encounters and experiences and listening.""-- Provided by publisher
“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 TimesNotebook in hand, Amos Oz traveled throughout Israel and the West Bank in the early 1980s to talk with workers, soldiers, religious zealots, aging pioneers, new immigrants, desperate Arabs, and visionaries, asking them questions about Israel’s past, present, and future. What he heard is set down here in those distinctive voices, alongside Oz’s observations and reflections. A classic insider’s view of a land whose complex past and troubled present make for an uncertain future.“Oz’s vignettes . . . wondrously re-create whole worlds with an economy of words.” — Philadelphia Inquirer
A novel in stories by acclaimed Israeli author Amos Oz.
The Kibbutz of Metsudat Ram lies in the valley of Jordan, close to the border. Old and young, happy and discontented, the settlers go about their lives as the artillery rumbles in the distance and the war planes shriek overhead. Among them are Reuven, the school teacher whose true calling is poetry, his teenaged daughter, the capricious Noga, and Ezra, the Kibbutz's truck-driver. As the seasons pass, so too do storms of love and passion, conflict and misunderstanding, gossip and scandal - all threatening to tear apart a community held together by necessity and idealism.