A Tale of Love and Darkness

Front Cover
Chatto & Windus, 2004 - Biography & Autobiography - 517 pages
Love and darkness are just two of the powerful forces that run through Amos Oz's extraordinary, moving story. He takes us on a bold, seductive journey through his childhood and adolescence, a quixotic child's eye view along Jerusalem's wartorn streets in the 1940s and '50s, and into the infernal marriage of two kind, well-meaning people: his fussy, logical father, and his dreamy, romantic mother. Caught between them is one small boy with the weight of generations on his shoulders. And at the tragic heart of the tale is the suicide of his mother, when Amos was twelve-and-a-half years old. Soon after, still a gawky adolescent, he left home, changed his name and became a tractor driver on a kibbutz. 'Jews go back to Palestine' urged the graffiti in 1930s Lithuania, so they went; then later the walls of Europe shouted 'Jews get out of Palestine'. Oz's story dives into 120 years of family history and paradox, the saga of a Jewish love-hate affair with Europe that sweeps from Vilna and Odessa, via Poland and Prague, to Israel. Those who stayed in Europe were murdered; those who escaped took the past with them. In search of the roots of his family tragedy, he uncovers the secrets and skel

About the author (2004)

Amos Oz was born Amos Klausner in Jerusalem on May 4, 1939. As a young teenager, he moved to Kibbutz Hulda, where he completed his secondary education and worked on a farm. After he completed mandatory military service in 1961, the kibbutz assembly sent him to study at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he received a B.A. in philosophy and literature. After graduation, he moved back to Hulda, where he wrote, did farm work, did guard and dining-room duty, and taught in the kibbutz high school. He fought in the 1967 and 1973 wars and spent a year as a visiting fellow at Oxford University. He wrote novels, collections of short fiction, works of nonfiction, and essays. His novels included My Michael, Black Box, and The Gospel According to Judas. His memoir, A Tale of Love and Darkness, was adapted into a movie in 2016. His last book, Dear Zealot, was made up of three essays on the theme of fanaticism. He was an advocate for peace and believed in a two-state solution, meaning the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. In the late 1970s, he helped found Peace Now. He received several awards including the Goethe Prize, the French Knight's Cross of the Légion D'Honneur, and the Israel Prize. He died after a short battle with cancer on December 28, 2018 at the age of 79.

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