Amos Oz: Writer, Activist, Icon

by Robert Alter

An intimate portrait illuminating the life and work of Amos Oz, the award-winning Israeli writer and activist
 
Amos Oz (1939–2018) was one of Israel’s most prolific and prominent writers, as well as a regular contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was the author of dozens of novels, essay collections, and novellas written between 1965 and shortly before his death.
 
In this first published biography of Oz, the celebrated translator, literary critic, and biblical scholar Robert Alter explores Oz’s relationship with his family, beginning with the suicide of his mother, Fania Klausner, when he was twelve years old, and goes on to review his time in Kibbutz Hulda, which he entered at fourteen following his separation from his father, Arieh Klausner; his family’s right-wing Zionism; his writing career; his activism in support of a pluralistic Israel; and his work as an international lecturer.
 
In examining Oz’s life and work, Alter brings together testimony from Oz and his circle, as well as close readings of his central works, to present the inner world and public persona of Amos Oz.

200 pages, Hardcover

Published September 26, 2023

About the author

Robert Bernard Alter is an American professor of Hebrew and comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1967, and has published many acclaimed works on the Bible, literary modernism, and contemporary Hebrew literature.

Reviews

[Michael Lewyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book took me a few hours to read, and it gave me a brief portrait of Oz. My sense from the book is that Oz's novels tend to be a bit depressing, and that his prose tends to be anything but spare. Alter also discusses Oz's private life, including his difficult childhood and his happy marriage.

[Gabriele · Rating 1 out of 5]

The "intimate portrait" means that Alter simply retells Oz's novels and reports what everyone who has ever dealt with Oz has long known.