Amos Oz's new fiction presents a surreal and unsettling portrait of a village in Israel. A picture of the community takes shape across seven stories, in which a group of characters appear and return. Each villager is searching for something, yet in this almost dreamlike world nothing is certain, nothing is resolved. An old man grumbles to his daughter about the unexplained digging and banging he hears under the house at night. A stranger turns up at a man's door, to persuade him that they must get rid of his ageing mother ...
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Amos Oz's new fiction presents a surreal and unsettling portrait of a village in Israel. A picture of the community takes shape across seven stories, in which a group of characters appear and return. Each villager is searching for something, yet in this almost dreamlike world nothing is certain, nothing is resolved. An old man grumbles to his daughter about the unexplained digging and banging he hears under the house at night. A stranger turns up at a man's door, to persuade him that they must get rid of his ageing mother in order to sell the house. A man goes to his neighbours for regular evenings of music and old pioneer songs, but is overwhelmingly drawn to the tragic heart of the house. Behind each episode is another, hidden story - a glimpse of what goes on beneath the surface of everyday existence. The book concludes with an eighth story, shocking and strange, from another place and a distant time. In beautifully simple, poetic language, Amos Oz peers into the darkness of our lives in this powerful, hypnotic work.
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Seller's Description:
Alex Majoli (Front jacket photograph) and Colin Mc. Very good in Very good jacket. The format is approximately 5.5 inches by 8.5 inches. DJ has slight wear, soiling and sticker scuffing. Inscribed by the author on the title page. Inscription reads To Elizabeth Best Amos Oz. Amos Oz (born Amos Klausner; 4 May 1939-28 December 2018) was an Israeli writer, novelist, journalist, and intellectual. He was also a professor of Hebrew literature at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. From 1967 onwards, Oz was a prominent advocate of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He was the author of 40 books, including novels, short story collections, children's books, and essays, and his work has been published in 45 languages, more than that of any other Israeli writer. He was the recipient of many honors and awards, among them the Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels, the Legion of Honour of France, the Israel Prize, the Goethe Prize, the Prince of Asturias Award in Literature, the Heinrich Heine Prize, and the Franz Kafka Prize. Oz is regarded as one of "Israel's most prolific writers and respected intellectuals", as The New York Times worded it in an obituary. Nicholas Robert Michael de Lange (born 7 August 1944) is a British Reform rabbi and historian. Nicholas de Lange is an emeritus fellow at Wolfson College, Cambridge. He has written and edited several books about Judaism and translated numerous works of fiction by Amos Oz, S. Yizhar and A. B. Yehoshua into English. In November 2007, he received the Risa Domb/Porjes Prize for Translation from the Hebrew for his translation of A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz. Strange things are happening in Tel Ilan, a century-old pioneer village. A disgruntled retired politician complains to his daughter that he hears the sound of digging at night. Could it be their tenant, that young Arab? But then the young Arab hears the digging sounds too. Where has the mayor's wife gone, vanished without trace, her note saying Don't worry about me? Around the village, the veneer of new wealth, gourmet restaurants, art galleries, a winery, barely conceals the scars of war and of past generations: disused air raid shelters, rusting farm tools, and trucks left wherever they stopped. Scenes from Village Life is a memorable novel-in-stories by the inimitable Amos Oz: a brilliant, unsettling glimpse of what goes on beneath the surface of everyday life. Derived from a Kirkus review: Mysteries bedevil the inhabitants of an Israeli village in this story collection, the 14th work of fiction from the renowned Israeli. The village of Tel Ilan was founded by farmers at the start of the 20th century. A century later, the village is gentrifying as wealthy outsiders discover its charms. That's a problem, but the locals are wrestling with less obvious disturbances. In the longest story ("Digging"), an 86-year-old man, a former Knesset member and unpleasant misanthrope, is being cared for by his middle-aged daughter; their handyman, an Arab university student, also lives on the property. The old man complains of mysterious digging sounds under the house at night. Imaginings. But then the Arab hears them, and finally so does the daughter. Yossi Sasson, the realtor in "Lost, " is troubled by the feeling he must do something, but exactly what he doesn't know. If his unease is existential, how to explain his sighting of an Alpine hiker in the middle of town? The popular mayor, Benny Avni, is looking for his wife after receiving a cryptic message from her ("Waiting"). Like Yossi, he must make a decision; if only he knew about what. A third character troubled by an undefined mission is the unnamed narrator of "Singing." He's a guest at a communal singing event, a successful evocation of village life by Oz. The hosts are a couple whose only child committed suicide. That memory triggers the narrator's own "despair"; but despair over what? He's a mystery man. There are yet more unresolved mysteries in "Heirs" and "Relations." In the former, a man living with his...
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Seller's Description:
Very good in Very good jacket. Glued binding. Paper over boards. [6], 182, [4] pages. Signed by author. DJ has slight scuff mark on front. In the village of Tel Ilan, things are not what they seem. And the veneer of new wealth around the village cannot conceal relics of a troubled past--abandoned outbuildings, air raid shelters, rusting farm tools, and abandoned trucks. From Wikipedia: "Amos Oz (born May 4, 1939, birth name Amos Klausner) is an Israeli writer, novelist, journalist and intellectual. He is also a professor of literature at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba. Oz's work has been published in 42 languages, including Arabic, in 43 countries. He has received many honours and awards, among them the Legion of Honour of France, the Goethe Prize, the Prince of Asturias Award in Literature, the Heinrich Heine Prize and the Israel Prize. In 2007, a selection from the Chinese translation of A Tale of Love and Darkness was the first work of modern Hebrew literature to appear in an official Chinese textbook. Since 1967, Oz has been a prominent advocate of a two-state solution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict. Amos Klausner (later Oz) was born in Jerusalem in 1939, where he grew up at No. 18 Amos Street in the Kerem Avraham neighborhood. His parents, Yehuda Arieh Klausner and Fania Mussman, were immigrants to Mandatory Palestine, who met while studying at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. His father's family was from Lithuania, where they had been farmers, raising cattle and vegetables near Vilna. His father studied history and literature in Wilno, Lithuania and hoped to become a professor of comparative literature but never gained headway in the academic world. He worked most of his life as a librarian at the Jewish National and University Library. Oz's mother came from Rivne (now in the Ukraine, but then part of the Russian Empire). She was a highly sensitive and cultured daughter of a wealthy mill owner and attended Charles University in Prague where she studied history and philosophy. She had to abandon her studies when her father's business collapsed in the Great Depression. When Oz first began to write, the kibbutz alloted him one day per week for this work. When his book My Michael turned out to be a best-seller Oz quipped that he had become "a branch of the economy" and the kibbutz alloted him three days. By the 1980s he was given four days for writing, two for teaching, while continuing to take his turn as a waiter in the kibbutz dining hall on Saturdays. Oz did his Israel Defense Forces service in the Nahal brigade, participating in border skirmishes with Syria. After concluding his army service he was sent by his kibbutz to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where he studied philosophy and Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He graduated in 1963 and began work as a teacher of literature and philosophy. He subsequently served with a tank unit in the Sinai Peninsula during the Six-Day War and in the Golan Heights during the Yom Kippur War. Oz's earliest publications were short articles in the kibbutz newsletter and the newspaper Davar. His first book Where the Jackals Howl, a collection of short stories, was published in 1965. His first novel Elsewhere, Perhaps was published in 1966. Subsequently Oz averaged a book per year with the Histadrut press Am Oved. Ultimately Oz left Am Oved for the Keter Publishing House, which offered him an exclusive contract that granted him a fixed monthly salary regardless of output. Oz has Published 38 books, among them 13 novels, four collections of stories and novellas, Children s books, and nine books of articles and essays (as well as six selections of essays that appeared in various languages), and about 450 articles and essays. His works have been translated into some 42 languages, including Arabic. Oz has published political commentary and literary criticism as well as fiction. He has written extensively for the Histradrut newspaper Davar as well as for...