A Tale of Love and Darkness
by Amos Oz
List Price:
Our Price: $5.37
You Save: $10.63 (66%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $1.31 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Amos OzTranslator: Nicholas de Lange
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-11-01
ISBN: 015603252X
Number of pages: 560
Publisher: Mariner Books
Book Reviews of A Tale of Love and Darkness
Book Review: A Jerusalem childhood . . .
Summary: 5 Stars
This 500+ page memoir by Israeli novelist Amos Oz is an absorbing "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man." The first 200 pages are about his mother's and fathers' families, Russian-speaking emigrants to Israel in the 1930s from Eastern Europe. An only child, he devotes much of the rest of the book to his parents and the years until his mother's death when he was still a teenager. It is a richly detailed book peopled with a Dickensian cast of characters. He allows readers to experience a total immersion in the daily life of a low-income Jerusalem neighborhood during the years leading up to and following the creation of Israel in 1948. It is a troubling story, capturing on the one hand the intensely felt emotions of being young, self-aware, and sensitive, while portraying also the humiliations and the least flattering of the author's personality and character, all played against the difficulties of his parents' lives and what seems to have been a disintegrating marriage.
Meanwhile, with its view of anti-semitic nationalism in Europe, readers can begin to understand something of the motivations driving zionist movements and the waves of Jewish settlement in Palestine before and after WWII. As Oz records the political discussions and obsessions of the friends of his parents, it's easier to understand the insularity and paranoia that led to the need for a homeland with defended borders and the eventual efforts to achieve military solutions to conflict with Palestinians and Arab neighbors. Though recognized today as a peace activist, Oz provides only hints of his evolution to a broader view, describing only his complete break with his past by leaving home for a kibbutz at the age of 15. As a companion memoir, readers will also be interested in "Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life," by Sari Nusseibeh.
Authors Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Authors Books
Bloomsbury Recalledby Quentin Bell
Columbia University Press; Published: 1997-01-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $19.40
Price in other shops:
William Tyndale: A Biographyby David Daniell
Yale University Press; Published: 1994-11-30; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $62.92
Neither Saints Nor Sinners: Writing the Lives of Women in Spanish Americaby Kathleen Ann Myers
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 2003-08-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $14.00
Price in other shops:
Storm of Steel (Penguin Classics)by Ernst Jünger
Penguin Classics; Published: 2004-05-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.00
Price in other shops:
Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Lifeby C.S. Lewis
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; Published: 1995-11-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $10.22
Price in other shops:
Roughing It (The Penguin American Library)by Mark Twain
Penguin Classics; Published: 1981-12-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.65
Price in other shops:
Life Is So Good: One Man's Extraordinary Journey through the 20th Century and How he Learned to Read at Age 98by George Dawson, Richard Glaubman
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2001-06-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.49
Price in other shops:
Shakespeare: The World as Stage (Eminent Lives)by Bill Bryson
Harper Perennial; Published: 2008-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.00
Price in other shops:
The Professor and the Madman CDby Simon Winchester
HarperAudio; Published: 2005-10-04; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $8.46
Price in other shops:
Alexander Hamilton: A Lifeby Willard Sterne Randall
Harper; Published: 2003-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $5.80
Price in other shops:
Similar books summaries and other product reviews
Defenders of the Faith: Inside Ultra-Orthodox Jewryby Samuel Heilman
University of California Press; Published: 1999-12-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $23.58
Price in other shops:
Call Me by Your Name: A Novelby André Aciman
Picador; Published: 2008-01-22; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.62
Price in other shops:
The World to Come: A Novelby Dara Horn
W. W. Norton & Company; Published: 2006-10-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.99
Price in other shops:
Mazel (Library of American Fiction)by Rebecca Goldstein
University of Wisconsin Press; Published: 2002-08-26; Paperback; Book
Best price: $16.31
Price in other shops:
Yekl and the Imported Bridegroom and Other Stories of Yiddish New Yorkby Abraham Cahan
Dover Publications; Published: 1970-06-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.45
Price in other shops:
Moments of Reprieve: A Memoir of Auschwitz (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin)by Primo Levi
Penguin Classics; Published: 1995-07-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.44
Price in other shops:
The Slaveby Isaac Bashevis Singer
Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Published: 1988-10-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.63
Price in other shops:
The Coffee Trader: A Novel (Ballantine Reader's Circle)by David Liss
Ballantine Books; Published: 2004-02-03; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.92
Price in other shops:
A Short History of the Jewish People: From Legendary Times to Modern Statehoodby Raymond P. Scheindlin
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 2000-07-27; Paperback; Book
Best price: $11.35
Price in other shops:
Scenes from Village Lifeby Amos Oz
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; Published: 2011-10-18; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $13.40
Price in other shops: