Amos Oz (1939–2018)

The latest novel by the acclaimed Israeli author, his first in over a decade, is set in Jerusalem during the winter of 1959-1960, and is centered on a passionate and sensitive young man, Shmuel Ash, who decides to abandon his graduate studies after he loses interest in his research of the Jewish view of Jesus throughout history, and after his girlfriend, who he loves deeply, leaves him for another man. His parents' recent financial misfortune causes them to withdraw their support of him, and show more he is forced to abandon his flat and find a way to fend for himself until he can figure out what he wants to do next. Opportunity comes from an ad on a university bulletin board, which offers room, board and a small salary for a young educated man to serve as a companion to an elderly, crippled former teacher in a house near the no man's land between the city's Israeli occupied border and the surrounding Jordanian territory. Shmuel goes to there almost immediately, and finds a charming but decrepit house that seems to be partially buried in the ground compared to its neighbors, in keeping with its secluded, molelike occupants. There he meets Gershon Wald, the witty invalid who relishes any opportunity to engage in verbal jousts on the phone with his remaining friends, and with Shmuel, an avowed socialist, who does not fully embrace the older man's pro-Zionist views. Of greater interest to Shmuel is Atalia, the house's other resident, a mysterious and alluring woman in her 40s who keeps a closetful of secrets, and teases the smitten young man with an alternating mixture of disdain and affection.

The book's other main theme is a re-evaluation by Shmuel of Judas as the first Christian and the most loyal of Jesus' disciplines, rather than a traitor, along with his interest in Atalia's late father, who was labeled as a traitor and forced to resign in shame from the Zionist Executive Committee in the months just prior to the formation of the state of Israel, due to his political views and statements which were in opposition to those held by his colleagues.

The numerous secrets held tightly by Gershon and Atalia are slowly revealed to Shmuel, and to the reader, in the manner of a flower whose petals are removed, one by one, until the sweet nectar in its center is uncovered and savored.

The novel started out slowly but became more compelling and impossible to put down about 1/3 of the way in, and I finished the last 2/3 in a single sitting. Judas is right up there with my favorite books by this brilliant author, who is still going strong at the age of 75 and is far more deserving of a Nobel Prize in Literature than the most recent recipient was. show less

There are passages in this book that not only swept me up, but forced me to read and re-read them, again and again, before I could move on. As ever, Oz's prose is powerful and lyrical, and his characters slip off the page and into your thoughts as if you're seeing them and feeling their emotions and their frustrations at every turn. Here, the taciturn natures kept them more distanced than usual, but they somehow felt all the more magical for it.

Simply, Oz is one of my favorite writers, and show more this book didn't disappoint. show less

I've had this book since soon after it was published, but I avoided reading it. My uncle gave me the book, having read half of it already, and told me it was "wonderful." This is the same uncle who once thought that a pumpkin pie was "wonderful," even though my grandmother had omitted all sweetener from the filling and the rest of us thought it tasted pretty horrible. This is all to say, the book was recommended to me by someone with highly suspect taste.

In any event, the book is wonderful. show more It's beautifully written. It's interesting. It's the kind of book that you can't wait to finish but don't want to end.

I don't read much non-fiction. I also don't gravitate toward books on "stressful" topics, like the Arab-Israeli conflict. This book is, as much as any memoir can be, non-fiction. Oz does write factually about Israeli independence, European antisemitism, and his family's history. But, it's ultimately a very personal and intimate book, and that's what made it a pleasure to read.

I thought the book seemed like a very honest account. He shows us what an annoying little child he sometimes was. You see his regrets. You cringe at his misplaced confidence, which seems to have derived from a very active fantasy life. show less

A slightly quirky, tentative sort of novel in which not very much happens, but Oz spends his time digging into the life of a rather disparate couple living in a small new town in the desert and into what it might tell us about how Israel works as a young country. A big part of Oz’s technique here is switching back and forth between the viewpoints of Theo and Noa, and often showing us the same incidents from two different perspectives, or even giving us bits of narrative that we are show more explicitly told to question.

Theo and Noa belong to different generations of Israelis: he is a semi-retired architect and planner, literally one of the people who built the new state, whilst she is a school teacher who grew up after independence and is suspicious of Theo’s networks of authority-figures who fought the British together back in the day. After the tragic death of one of her pupils, she has been made responsible for running a project to build a rehabilitation centre for young addicts, something she is very committed to, but it soon becomes clear that there is far too little support in the community for it to get anywhere. show less