A Tale of Love and Darkness

Love and darkness are just two of the powerful forces that run through Amos Oz's extraordinary, moving story. He takes us on a seductive journey through his childhood and adolescence, along Jerusalem's war-torn streets in the 1940s and '50s, and into the infernal marriage of two kind, well-meaning people: his fussy, logical father, and his dreamy, romantic mother. Caught between them is one small boy with the weight of generations on his shoulders. And at the tragic heart of the story is the suicide of his mother, when Amos was twelve-and-a-half years old. Oz's story dives into 120 year of family history and paradox, the saga of a Jewish love-hate affair with Europe that sweeps from Vilna and Odessa, via Poland and Prague, to Israel. Farce and heartbreak, history and humanity make up this magical portrait of the artist who saw the birth of a nation, and came through its turbulent life as well as his own. This is a memoir like no other, and one that cries out to be read and wept over.

ISBN 0099450038   Pages 448 ISBN13 9780099450030 (What's this?)   Weight (grammes) 358 Publisher Vintage   Published in London Imprint Vintage   Height (mm) 200 Format Paperback   Width (mm) 131 Publication date 04 Aug 2005   Spine width (mm) 34 DEWEY 892.436   Academic level General DEWEY edition DC22

PRAISE FOR "A TALE OF LOVE AND DARKNESS""Detailed and beautiful . . . As he writes about himself and his family, Oz is also writing part of the history of the Jews . . . We are in the hands here of a capable, practiced seducer."--"Los Angeles Times""This lyrical saga . . . succeeds both as a revelatory tale of the artist as young man and a gripping portrait of the young Jewish state itself."--"The Miami Herald"

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