The Reader draws on Oz’s entire body of work, loosely grouped into four themes: the kibbutz, the city of Jerusalem, the idea of a "promised land," and his own life story. Included are excerpts from his celebrated novels, among them Where the Jackals Howl, A Perfect Peace, My Michael, Fima, Black Box, and To Know a Woman. Nonfiction is represented by selections from Under This Blazing Light, The Slopes of Lebanon, In the Land of Israel, and Oz’s masterpiece, A Tale of Love and Darkness. Robert Alter, a noted Hebrew scholar and translator, has provided an illuminating introduction. The son of a doomed storytelling mother and a citizen of a nation conceived as a lifeboat in a sea of genocide become a state that engenders statelessness, celebrated Israeli writer Oz is acutely sensitive to the paradoxes of language and the imagination. Bringing the same intensity of engagement and passion for poetic expression to fiction and nonfiction alike, he articulates the psychological complexity beneath the armor of Israel’s bellicose politics and the tragedy of its geopolitical predicament. This well-organized volume reaches back to the 1960s, mixes genres, and showcases Oz’s beautifully mythic prose. He vigorously dissects Israel’s history, kibbutz life, and the unique ambiance of Jerusalem, the “gloomy capital of an exuberant state.” Deeply attuned to “primeval hatred,” the emotional valence of nature, the conflict between community demands and private dreams and sorrows, he writes with great insight about “identity and identification.” Fluent in social matters, Oz finds meaning in the lives of individuals, each a cosmos of pain and love. Timely and illuminating. --Donna Seaman "Bringing the same intensity of engagement and passion for poetic expression to fiction and nonfiction alike, [Oz] articulates the psychological complexity beneath the armor of Israel's bellicose politics and the tragedy of its geopolitical predicament. This well-organized volume reaches back to the 1960s, mixes genres, and showcases Oz's beautifully mythic prose...Timely and illuminating."-Donna Seaman, Booklist "[T]his literary album contains striking snapshots by a gifted writer with a capacious heart and humane philosophy." - Kirkus Reviews A rich and varied selection of writings?from the early sixties to the present?by Amos Oz, one of Israel’s leading novelists, public intellectuals, and political activists. The Amos Oz Reader draws on Oz's entire body of work and is loosely grouped into four themes: the kibbutz, the city of Jerusalem, the idea of a "promised land", and his own life story. Included are excerpts from his celebrated novels, among them Where the Jackals Howl , A Perfect Peace , My Michael , Fima , Black Box , and To Know a Woman . Nonfiction is represented by selections from Under This Blazing Light , The Slopes of Lebanon , In the Land of Israel , and Oz’s masterpiece, A Tale of Love and Darkness . With an illuminating introduction by Robert Alter. Praise for A Tale of Love and Darkness : "A[n]?ingenious work that circles around the rise of a state, the tragic destiny of a mother, a boy’s creation of a new self." ?The New Yorker "Detailed and beautiful?As he writes about himself and his family, Oz is also writing part of the history of the Jews." ?Los Angeles Times  AMOS OZ is a prize-winning novelist and essayist whose honors include the Prix Femina, the Israel Prize, the Frankfurt Peace Prize, and the Prince of Asturias Award for Letters. Most recently, his memoir, A Tale of Love and Darkness , received the Koret Jewish Book Award. He lives in Arad. NITZA BEN-DOV is Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at Haifa University, as well as a scholar of biblical poetics. ROBERT ALTER is an esteemed scholar and translator. His recent translations include The Book of Psalms and The Five Books of Moses . AMOS OZ (1939–2018) was born in Jerusalem. He was the recipient of the Prix Femina, the Frankfurt Peace Prize, the Goethe Prize, the Primo Levi Prize, and the National Jewish Book Award, among other international honors. His work, including A Tale of Love and Darkness and In the Land of Israel , has been translated into forty-four languages.  The Kibbutz at the Present Time from Under This Blazing Light (Adapted from a 1974 publication)No, I do not believe there is any such thing as a 'kibbutz literature.' There are poems and books that have a kibbutz setting, and there are poets and writers who live in a kibbutz, but the kibbutz has not inspired any 'mutation' of Hebrew literature.      For myself, I am better off, for various reasons, living in a kibbutz than I could be elsewhere, even if kibbutz life exacts its price from me.      If I lived in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, it is very doubtful whether I would manage to elude the grip of the 'literary world," in which writers and academics and critics and poets sit around discussing each other.      Not that this phenomenon is