OZ, Amos

Nationality: Israeli. Born: Jerusalem, 4 May 1939. Education: Hebrew University, Jerusalem, B.A. in Hebrew literature and philosophy 1963. Military Service: Served in the Israeli Army, 1957-60; fought as reserve soldier in tank corps in Sinai, 1967, and in the Golan Heights, 1973. Family: Married Nily Zuckerman in 1960; two daughters and one son. Career: Teacher of literature and philosophy, Hulda High School, Kibuts Hulda, and Regional High School, Givat Brenner, 1963-86; also tractor driver, youth instructor, Kibuts Hulda; visiting fellow, St. Cross College, Oxford, 1969-70; writer-in-residence or visiting professor, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1975, University of California, Berkeley, 1980, Colorado College, Colorado Springs, 1984-85, Boston University, 1987, and Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1990; professor of Hebrew literature, Ben Gurion University, Beersheva, since 1987; visiting professor, Princeton University, 1997; visiting professor, St. Anne's College, 1998. Lives in Arad. Awards: Holon prize, 1965; Israel-American Cultural Foundation award, 1968; B'nai B'rith award, 1973; Brenner prize, 1976; Ze'ev award for childrens' books, 1978; Bernstein prize, 1983; Bialik prize, 1986; H. H. Wingate award, 1988; Prix Femina Étranger (France), 1988; German Publishers' Union international peace prize, 1992. Honorary doctorate: Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati, 1988; Western New England College, Springfield, Massachusetts, 1988; Tel Aviv University, 1992. Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France), 1984. Member: Catalan Academy of the Mediterranean, Barcelona, 1989, and Academy of Hebrew Language, 1991; French Cross of the Knight of the Legion d'Honneur, 1997.

Publications

Short Stories

Artsot hatan. 1965; as Where the Jackals Howl, and Other Stories, 1981.

Ahavah me'ucheret (novellas). 1971; as Unto Death, 1975.

Anashim acherim [Different People]. 1974.

Har ha'etsah hara'ah (novellas). 1976; as The Hill of Evil Counsel, 1978.

Novels

Makom acher. 1966; as Elsewhere, Perhaps, 1973.

Micha'el sheli. 1968; as My Michael, 1972.

Laga'at bamayim, laga'at baruach. 1973; as Touch the Water, Touch the Wind, 1974.

Menuchah nechonah. 1982; as A Perfect Peace, 1985.

Kufsah shechorah. 1987; as Black Box, 1988.

Lada'at ishah. 1989; as To Know a Woman, 1991.

Hamatsav hashelishiy [The Third Condition]. 1991.

Al Tadidi Laila. 1994; as Don't Call It Night, 1995.

Panter Bamartef. 1995; as Panther in the Basement, 1997.

Other

Soumchi (story; for children). 1978; translated as Soumchi, 1980.

Be'or hakelet he'azah [Under This Blazing Light] (essays). 1979.

Po vesham b'eretz Yisra'el (essays). 1983; as In the Land of Israel, 1983.

Mimordot haLevanon (essays). 1987; as The Slopes of Lebanon, 1989.

Mat'hilim Sipur. 1996; as The Story Begins, n.d.

Editor, with Richard Flantz, Until Daybreak: Stories from the Kibbutz. 1984.

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Critical Studies:

"On Oz: Under the Blazing Light" by Dov Vardi, in Modern Hebrew Literature 5(4), 1979; "The Jackal and the Other Place: The Stories of Oz" by Leon I. Yudkin, in his 1948 and After: Aspects of Israeli Fiction, 1984; "An Interview with Oz" by Anita Susan Grossman, in Partisan Review 53(3), 1986; "The Mythic Pattern in the Fiction of Oz" by Avraham Balaban, and " My Michael—from Jerusalem to Hollywood via the Red Desert" by Nurith Gertz, both in Modern Hebrew Literature in English Translation, edited by Leon I. Yudkin, 1987; "Oz in Arad: A Profile" by Shuli Barzilai, in Southern Humanities Review 21(1), 1987; "Oz: The Lack of Conscience" by Esther Fuchs, in Israeli Mythogynies: Women in Contemporary Hebrew Fiction, 1987; "Oz: Off the Reservation" by Chaim Chertok, in his We Are All Close: Conversations with Israeli Writers, 1989, in The Arab in Israeli Literature by Gila Ramras-Rauch, 1989, in Voices of Israel by Joseph Cohen, 1990; "Oz" (interview) by Eleanor Wachtel, in Queens Quarterly 98(2), 1991; Writing and Being by Nadine Gordimer, 1995.

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Amos Oz published his first short story in 1962 and three years later published Where the Jackals Howl, and Other Stories (Artsot hatan), eight tales about life on a kibbutz. Of these "Upon This Evil Earth" is a reworking of the biblical story of Jephthah, who, promising God that he will sacrifice the first thing he meets upon his return from his victory over the Ammonites, is first greeted by his only daughter. The forlorn father must contend with this bitter irony. In "Nomad and Viper" Geula, a middle-aged unmarried woman living on a kibbutz, comes upon a Bedouin. Warned against his kind, she is both repulsed and fascinated. He is courteous, even courtly, and they smoke together. When he starts to pray, she plies him with inappropriate questions, not realizing that it is sinful to interrupt a Muslim at prayer. Because he rushes off, she reconstructs the reality of their encounter to assuage her thwarted desires. She imagines that he wished to have sex with her, for which she initially calls for revenge not only against him but against all of "them." She later regrets such feelings and even wonders about going to him.

The jackals of the collection's title represent forces both outside and inside the kibbutz that seek to destroy it. Recurring in Oz's later works, the animal symbolizes threats to Israel's existence. This volume provoked considerable critical comment, some of it negative, because it empathically presented the "other," who before that time had not been so treated to any extent in Israeli literature. Since then Oz's well-known stance of seeking political accommodation with Palestinians has made both him and his writings a target for right-wing political and religious ideologues.

A later work, "The Trappist Monastery," draws from Oz's experience as a soldier in the tank corps in both the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars. Loud and bearlike, the prankster-soldier Itshe loves the beautiful Bruria. Kirsch, a weak, ineffective sick bay orderly who longs to go on a military mission with Itshe, is Bruria's rival for the soldier. Kirsch lies to Itshe, saying that Bruria has gone off to Jerusalem with someone else. A frenzied trip in a jeep to find her is a foray into the heart of darkness, during which the truck breaks down close to the enemy border. In the blackness the men see the outline of a Trappist monastery whose inhabitants observe permanent silence, thereby avoiding language, which, they believe, creates lies and deception. The glib Kirsch initially is delighted with Itshe's growing discomfort with the silence. Eventually, however, he is nauseated by his hero's terror, a reversal of the David and Goliath archetypes conjured up earlier in the story.

The two novellas in Unto Death (Ahavah me'ucheret) and the three in The Hill of Evil Counsel (Har ha'etsah hara'ah) are Oz's best works of short fiction. The former treats the theme of self-deception. In both works the chief characters are unable to achieve the laudable goals they seek because their quest is based on delusions and lies that end up destroying them. In "Crusade," set in 1096 C.E., the French nobleman Guillaume of Touron sets off with the high-minded intention of freeing Jerusalem from "the infidel," when, in fact, he leaves for pressing personal and financial reasons. On the way he and his men murder many Jews. He eventually goes mad and dies, possibly a suicide, and most of the others kill one another until, finally, only nine continue on their journey to an undetermined otherworldly realm. The disparity between the knights' pious religious language and their horrific deeds underscores the moral emptiness of their undertaking.

"Late Love," set in modern Israel, is an extended interior monologue by the slovenly, unappealing Shraga Unger, an old Russian émigré who lectures on Russian Jewry at various kibbutzim. Thinking himself redundant, he feels that he is being edged out of his position by people who have no further use for him. Living in the past and unable to cope with the present, he sits alone in his filthy room, overtaken by terror and panic, longing to be loved, waiting to die.

The three stories in The Hill of Evil Counsel—"Mr. Levi," "Longing," and "The Hill of Evil Counsel"—are set in Jerusalem shortly after World War II and just prior to the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. The works are interrelated through the character of the young boy Uri, who in "Mr. Levi" loses his childhood idealism and his trust of those adults who encourage him in his vehemently anti-British attitudes. When the mysterious Mr. Levi arrives, Uri is told a lie—that Mr. Levi is his uncle. Moreover, Uri must say nothing about him to anyone. Levi spends a single night at Uri's home. When the next day Uri asks where Mr. Levi has gone, his parents meticulously avoid all talk of the man, as if to deny that anyone had been there at all. Horrified, Uri realizes their lie and betrayal.

"Longing" consists of a series of eight letters written by Dr. Emanuel Nussbaum, a prim, weak-willed doctor who is dying of cancer, to Dr. Hermine Oswald, an aggressive, self-assured psychologist who has left Palestine for the United States. Nussbaum recalls their meeting, their affair, her departure, and the longing he feels at having lost her. He describes the daily events in the neighborhood, which reflect Zionist longings for independence; his own physical deterioration, which provokes his longing for good health; and his growing affection for Uri, whom he comes to look upon as his and Hermine's secret son and in whom he invests all of his hopes for Israel's future. The doctor is also pleased with Uri's return of affection. This is one of Oz's most poignant and affective works.

Some features of Oz's short fiction—the destructiveness of anti-Semitism on both the hated and the hater, reality versus unreality, personal needs versus national agendas—are worked out in further detail and with greater intricacy and depth in his various novels. His works, whether short or long, show Oz to be one of Israel's world-class writers of fiction.

—Carlo Coppola

See the essay on "The Hill of Evil Counsel."