Astonishing . . . galvanic and intoxicating. The New Yorker
Fima lives in Jerusalem, but feels he ought to be somewhere else. In his life he has had secret love affairs, good ideas, and written a book of poems that aroused expectations. He has thought about the purpose of the universe and where the country lost its way. He has felt longings of all sorts, and the constant desire to pen a new chapter. And here he is now, in his early fifties in a shabby apartment on a gloomy wet morning, engaged in a humiliating struggle to release his shirt from the zipper of his fly. With wit and...

The haunting poetry of Oz's] prose and the stunning logic of his testimony make a potent mixture." --Washington Post Book World

Amos Oz was one of the first voices of conscience to advocate for a two-state solution. As a founding member of the Peace Now movement, Oz has spent over thirty-five years speaking out on this issue, and these powerful essays and speeches span an important and formative period for understanding today's tension and crises. Whether he is discoursing on the role of writers in society or recalling his grandmother's death in the context of the...

A New York Times 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. Sunday Telegraph (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...

Countries need writers as their voices of conscience; few have them. Israel has Oz. Washington Post
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...

"In a world full of hype, noise, and confusion, the simple lucidity of The Same Sea is totally unexpected." -- New York Times Book Review

The Same Sea is Amos Oz's most adventurous and inventive book, a novel of lyrical beauty and narrative power. We meet the middle-aged Albert; his wife, whom he has lost to cancer; his prodigal son, who wanders the mountains of Tibet hoping to find himself; and his son's young girlfriend, with whom Albert becomes infatuated. The author himself receives phone calls from his creations, criticizing him for his portraits of them. A fever...

"Thoughtful, self-assured and highly sophisticated, full of the most skillful modulations of tone and texture. A modern Israeli Madame Bovary. New York Times Book Review
Set in 1950s Jerusalem, My Michael is the story of a remote and intense woman named Hannah Gonen and her marriage to a decent but unremarkable man named Michael. As the years pass and Hannah s tempestuous fantasy life encroaches upon reality, she feels increasingly estranged from him and the marriage gradually disintegrates. Gorgeously written, profoundly moving, this extraordinary novel is at once a haunting love...

Winner of the National Jewish Book Award

International Bestseller

" An] ingenious work that circles around the rise of a state, the tragic destiny of a mother, a boy's creation of a new self." -- The New Yorker

A family saga and a magical self-portrait of a writer who witnessed the birth of a nation and lived through its turbulent history. A Tale of Love and Darkness is the story of a boy who grows up in war-torn Jerusalem, in a small apartment crowded with books in twelve languages and relatives speaking nearly as many. The story of an adolescent...

"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." New York Times

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. The...

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 Times
Notebook 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...