An unnamed author waits in a bar in Tel Aviv on a stifling hot night. He is there to give a reading of his work but as he sits, bored, he begins to conjure up the life stories of the people he meets, not least Ricky, an equally bored but seductive waitress. Later, when the reading is underway, he weaves stories around the audience and panel before asking the professional reader for a drink. She declines and the Author walks away, only to climb the steps to her flat later that night. Or does he? In Amos Oz's beguiling, intriguing story the reader hardly knows where reality ends and invention begins...
| ISBN | 0099521024 | | DEWEY edition | DC22 | | ISBN13 | 9780099521020
(What's this?) | | Pages | 160 | | Publisher | Vintage | | Weight (grammes) | 120 | | Imprint | Vintage | | Published in | London | | Format | Paperback | | Height (mm) | 198 | | Publication date | 04 Feb 2010 | | Width (mm) | 131 | | Translator | Nicholas De Lange | | Spine width (mm) | 11 | | DEWEY | 892.436 | | Academic level | General |
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"From the prodigious Oz comes a delightfully elusive if slight story of imagination, talent and the transitory nature of fame...Stamped with Oz's charm and graceful skill in creating rich characters, this is a must for any fan."
-"Publishers Weekly"
"Israeli novelist Amos Oz performs an exquisite balancing act in his taut, evocative novel "Rhyming Life & Death", which immerses readers in the vagaries of the creative process, never letting us forget that there's an author pulling the strings, making the decisions, however arbitrary, and making us complicit in the illusion that these words on the page somehow represent lives lived, destinies fulfilled and desires thwarted...[A] spellbinding fable."
-"Kirkus Reviews", UpFront Review
"Hilarious and profound, Oz's tale of a mischievous taleteller ponders the eroticism of stories and the mysterious ways language and literature bridge the divide between inner and outer worlds; and it helps us make some sense, however gossamer, of life and death. A slyly philosophical novel."
-Donna Seaman, "Booklist""Beguiling...funny and philosophical...a surprisingly playful departure for Oz." - Financial Times "The book is a meditation on the art of writing, the relationship between literature and life, between life and death, and also about the nature and significance of literary fame....the work of a master...A book you are likely to return to." - The Scotsman ."..it is fascinating to witness this assured and experienced writer address such basic novelistic concerns as life and death, love and sex, language and silence, along a spectrum from cynicism, through humour to candour." - Sunday Telegraphy ."..a deft way with quirky deail, a master class in interlocking character sketches, and a fable on themes of sex, death and writing;pitched somewhere between the fictional universes of JM Coetzee and Milan Kundera." - The Guardian "Delectable...Amos Oz's Rhyming Life and Death is a midsummer night's dream."- Buffalo News
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