Scenes from Village Life

Amos Oz's new fiction presents a surreal and unsettling portrait of a village in Israel. A picture of the community takes shape across seven stories, in which a group of characters appear and return. Each villager is searching for something, yet in this almost dreamlike world nothing is certain, nothing is resolved. An old man grumbles to his daughter about the unexplained digging and banging he hears under the house at night. A stranger turns up at a man's door, to persuade him that they must get rid of his ageing mother in order to sell the house. A man goes to his neighbours for regular evenings of music and old pioneer songs, but is overwhelmingly drawn to the tragic heart of the house. Behind each episode is another, hidden story - a glimpse of what goes on beneath the surface of everyday existence. This book concludes with an eighth story, shocking and strange, from another place and a distant time. In beautifully simple, poetic language, Amos Oz peers into the darkness of our lives in this powerful, hypnotic work.

ISBN 0701185503   Pages 272 ISBN13 9780701185503 (What's this?)   Weight (grammes) 357 Publisher Vintage   Published in London Imprint Chatto & Windus   Height (mm) 204 Format Hardback   Width (mm) 136 Publication date 14 Jul 2011   Spine width (mm) 23 DEWEY 892.436   Academic level General DEWEY edition DC22

"Finely wrought... Oz writes characterizations that are subtle but surgically precise, rendering this work a powerfully understated treatment of an uneasy Israeli conscience."-"Publishers Weekly, "starred "Highly recommended."-"Library Journal", starredUK Praise for SCENES FROM VILLAGE LIFE: "An impressive and very affecting achievement...These stories, in their humanity, may do more for Israel than any of the decisions we have been led to expect of its leaders in the months to come."-New Statesman"One of the most powerful books you will read about present-day Israel."-Jewish Chronicle

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