Scenes from Village Life by Amos Oz
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.
This is a dark book, with a dark vision of contemporary Israel… The whole, rich, disturbing mixture makes one feel as if something dark is digging away at the foundations, something unnameable ready to emergeIt is one of the most powerful books you will read about present-day Israel. -- David Herman * Jewish Chronicle *
What is most arresting is the cumulative effect of his narratives and the relationships between three generations of Israelis in a territory that has too many ghosts -- Julia Pascal * Independent *
What is most arresting is the cumulative effect of his narratives and the relationships between three generations of Israelis in a territory that has too many ghosts -- Julia Pascal * Independent *
Born in Jerusalem in 1939, Amos Oz is the internationally acclaimed author of many novels and essay collections, translated into over 30 languages, including recently his brilliant semi-autiobiographical work, A Tale of Love and Darkness. He has received several international awards, including the Prix Femina, the Prix Mediterranee Etranger, the Israel Prize and the Frankfurt Peace Prize. He lives in Arad, Israel.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780701185503 |
| ISBN 10 | 0701185503 |
| Title | Scenes from Village Life |
| Author | Amos Oz |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Vintage Publishing |
| Year published | 2011-07-14 |
| Number of pages | 272 |
| Prizes | Short-listed for Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize 2013 (UK) |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |