Under This Blazing Light

"Perhaps most of the essays in this book are substitutes for stories that I have not managed to write," says Amos Oz in the preface to Under This Blazing Light. Published for the first time in English, this collection of essays reveals the personal and political thoughts of Israel's most celebrated novelist. The essays in this volume put a unique perspective on the author's own experiences and development, and reveal a complex and deeply human figure of practical political influence as well as of significant literary stature. Oz's refreshing blend of skepticism and idealism will win for him new readers, while delighting those who will recognize here the qualities evident in his other writings. Relevant in light of recent developments in the Middle East, the topics covered include an examination of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a dispute between "Right and Right"; a look at the meaning of socialism in the Israeli context; reflections on the concept of "Homeland" and on the nature of the Kibbutz; and reflections on the character of Zionism. The essays also include portraits of several Jewish writers and thinkers whose ideas and themes in one way or another have proved influential or determinative for Amos Oz himself. Amos Oz is widely considered to be Israel's most famous living writer. His fifteen books include My Michael, Touch the Water, Touch the Wind, In the Land of Israel, Black Box, To Know a Woman, and Fima. His work has been translated into twenty-nine languages, and he has received several major literary awards. He is currently a Professor of Modern Hebrew Literature at Ben-Gurion University.

The first publication in English of political and personal writings by Israel's most famous living author.

Publishers Weekly

Though written in the 1960s and '70s, these searching essays by Israeli novelist and peace activist Oz are remarkably fresh and timely. Viewing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a clash between ``right and right,'' that is, between the legitimate claims of two peoples for the same land, Oz urges compromise and a gradual, two-state solution. He enthusiastically describes his own experience living on a kibbutz, which he calls a unique attempt to reconstruct the extended family. In a revealing autobiographical sketch, Oz, born in Jerusalem in 1939, writes affectingly of growing up in Israel, of his mother's 1952 suicide and of his Russian-born businessman/poet grandfather, who moved to Palestine in 1933. Along with musings on what he calls the true themes of literature-sorrow, suffering, protest, complaint, consolation-Oz profiles Jewish writers and activists, among them Zionist Labor leader Aharon Gordon and Micha Berdyczew-ski, whose stories, written in Hebrew, are peopled by demigods, spirits and demons. In an introduction written in 1993, Oz calls for a ``Marshall Plan for the Middle East'' to resettle Palestinian and Soviet Jewish refugees and to create a prosperous region. (Apr.)