The 3 best books by the suggestive Amos Oz

There are writers who are by a large component of destiny. Amos Oz It was that author who, due to life experiences and decisions, had to end up putting black on white all those impressions, meditations and also contradictions that accompany the human being exposed to life in its crudest representation.

For a wandering Jew (as Amos Oz himself began as or as his contemporary and compatriot Philip Roth it was also), finally back to his promised land, opening up to controversies about what part of the land is really his and especially if it is worth it that a promised land ends up being bathed by an irrepressible river of blood for years and years , it supposed per se a confrontation with their culture, their ancestors and everything that the canon of Judaism supposed as a forced and plundered culture of their own country.

But certainly, neither in his fictional narrative nor in his essay books, Amos Oz ended up leaving any sign of giving in to the general ideology. His desire for peace, sometimes labeled as armchair goodness, always moved him in his social activism and in his commitment to letters.

Top 3 recommended books by Amos Oz

The black box

Brilliant metaphor as the title of one of the best epistolary novels in history. Around the broken marriage of Ilana and her ex-husband Alec we are going through the reality of a Jewish people that has always lived with a certain stateless spirit among their millennial struggle.

At times some felt expelled, but others felt liberated by not being tied to a promised land whose only promise was perpetual conflict. But far beyond the old dilemma we live an emotional evocation of failure, of the inseparable knots when there are children involved.

Alec left for the United States upset and Ilana stayed in Israel with a son unable to accept the breakup. Love and hate are a border that can be crossed without any return.

In the reality of the current life of the three characters we find that insurmountable void, narrated from the shocking first person of the letters in which the naked truths are poured.

the black box amos oz

Land of jackals

Life can be a novel, especially when that existence spans a disturbing world of uncertainties, threats, and passions. On a practical level, the return of the Jews to the promised land was organized around the kibbutz, at least in its most voluminous strata.

Settlers necessary to achieve that primary integration of space and the human being that occupies it. And around this reconstruction of a homeland, this reunion of the Jews with the place where their ancestors had lived, Amos Oz offers us some stories about experiences, circumstances and that attachment for the lost land that managed to keep them united in spirit throughout of customs and religion.

Geopolitical and identity conflicts aside, the notion presented by the author is that of the arrival to a spiritual refuge after MILLENNIUM of wandering anywhere in the world and receiving contempt and animosity in most cases.

For this reason alone, it is worth reading, listening, and considering every point of view, especially in its most personal aspect. When the Jews finally find a place where they can feel themselves, they have to consider how to return to their harsh land. They think of the commune and work to re-establish themselves in their little place in the world.

Undoubtedly a sum of very particular circumstances that offer a great narrative richness. Wandering Jews finally organized to return to the land the Roman Empire forced them to leave. But after so long the exile has penetrated too much in the soul.

And that is the ultimate impression that this book gives us. Founding a country of souls who have roamed the world for centuries was a dizzying accumulation of contradictory feelings.

Stories rich in nuances and deep in vital approaches. A necessary literary catharsis to be able to empathize with these people, a learning about the oldest of the nomadic peoples, a lesson about the unity in the dispersion.

land of jackals AMOS OZ

Between friends

Atomizing history through stories of the true protagonists is a very common resource for an author interested in showing that, the detail, the intrahistory as the true History in the last instance.

In this book we find eight stories about the first settlements in the form of Kibbutzs. The Jews learned to make the land their own in the most physical way, working it to survive.

We meet in Yikhat, Amos Oz's macondo, Jewish version. And it is there where the desire to present the common dream, the ideal of the people and their descent to the earthly is appreciated with the anecdotes that finally end up building the story and that trigger the final decisions of every human being.

Between friends
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