§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 intothe darkness of our lives in this powerful, hypnotic work.
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 intothe darkness of our lives in this powerful, hypnotic work.
Amos Oz, geb. 1939 als Amos Klausner in Jerusalem, wuchs auch dort auf. Seine Eltern waren 1917 von Odessa nach Wilna (damals Polen) geflüchtet und wanderten von dort nach Palästina aus. 1954 trat er dem Kibbuz Chulda bei und nahm den Namen Oz an, der auf hebräisch Kraft, Stärke bedeutet. Von 1960-63 studierte er Literatur und Philosophie an der hebräischen Universität in Jerusalem und kehrte nach seinem Bachelor-Abschluss in den Kibbuz zurück und lehrte bis 1986 Literatur und Philosophie an der Oberschule Hulda. Seit dem 6-Tage-Krieg war er in der israelischen Friedensbewegung aktiv und befürwortete eine Zwei-Staaten-Bildung im israelisch-palästinensichen Konflikt. Er ist Mitbegründer und herausragender Vertreter der seit 1977 bestehenden Friedensbewegung Schalom achschaw (Peace now). Seit 1987 lehrt er Hebräische Literatur an der Ben-Gurion Universität von Negev, Beesheba. Die Werke von Amos Oz wurden in 37 Sprachen übersetzt. Er hat zahlreiche Preise und Auszeichnungen erhalten
, u. a. im Jahr 2013 den Franz-Kafka-Preis und 2014 den Siegfried-Lenz-Preis.
, u. a. im Jahr 2013 den Franz-Kafka-Preis und 2014 den Siegfried-Lenz-Preis.
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© Jerry Bauer / Suhrkamp Verlag
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 emerge. It is one of the most powerful books you will read about present-day Israel. David Herman Jewish Chronicle