'I TREATED MY MOTHER'S MEMORY WITH SPITE, AS IF SHE WENT OFF WITH A LOVER' Israeli writer Amos Oz's work has been shaped by his mother's suicide when he was a child. Now, in his latest book - and for the first time in his literary career - he is ready to tell the true story of her death and how it impacted on his life From: Mail on Sunday | Date: November 28, 2004| Author: | Copyright 2004 Mail on Sunday. Provided by ProQuest LLC.Copyright information

About a week before his mother died, Amos Oz came home from school to find her dressed ready to go out, signifying to him that months of illness, of migraines and decline, had magically passed. They strolled arm-in-arm to a cafE in a leafy suburb of Jerusalem, where she treated him to the normally forbidden delights of coffee and ice cream. She committed suicide during the night between 5 and 6 January 1952. He was 12 and a half.

'That afternoon was a sort of honeymoon where I had her entire attention. I was the little man of her life for those few hours,' he says. 'It was not that she grew ...