Ranen Omer-Sherman 
Amos Oz 
The Legacy of a Writer in Israel and Beyond

The veteran contributors to this volume take as their central drama, and their essential task for analysis, the enduring literary and political legacy of Israel Prize laureate Amos Oz (1939–2019). Born a decade prior to the establishment of the state of Israel, in what was then Palestine under British rule, Oz’s life spanned the country’s entire history, and both his fiction and nonfiction restlessly probe and illuminate its fraught conflicts, contradictions, and ambivalences. Throughout his career, Oz grappled frankly with the often-painful realities of Israeli life while also celebrating the ebullience of the Israeli spirit, and his sophisticated understanding of the sociopolitical turmoil of his society was always accompanied by intensely lyrical language and deep penetrations into the vulnerabilities of the human psyche. The volume’s twenty contributors bring an exciting diversity of concerns and perspectives to Oz’s most celebrated novels (including his powerfully resonant final novel,
Judas) as well as to overlooked facets of his oeuvre, illuminating the breathtaking scope of his literary legacy. Together, they offer gripping analyses of his urgent and profoundly universal works about political and romantic dreamers whose heartfelt struggles with both their own human frailties and those of the state ultimately resonate far beyond Israel itself.

İçerik tablosu

Introduction: Amos Oz’s Arduous Truths and Ambivalences


Ranen Omer-Sherman




Part 1. IN A RETROSPECTIVE MODE



1. Reflections on
In the Land of Israel


David Grossman



2. Hannah Gonen . . . and Me: A Personal Essay


Sidra De Koven Ezrahi



3. The History of a Long Conversation


Nurith Gertz



4. Homeless between Two Homes


Avraham Balaban



5.
My Michael, May 1967


Nissim Calderon




Part 2. NOMADS, VIPERS, AND WOMEN



6. Maternal Illness and the Israeli Body Politic at War


Nitza Ben-Dov



7. The Little Plot and the Big Plot in Oz’s Early Fiction


Oded Nir



8. Oz’s Literary Genealogies: Salvage Poetics in
A Tale of Love and Darkness


Sheila E. Jelen




Part 3. COMING OF AGE: CONSTRUCTING THE HEBREW HOME(LAND)



9. Cat People: Coming of Age in
Mr. Levi and
Panther in the Basement


Adam Rovner



10. Tilling the Soil of National Ideology: Oz and the Hebrew Environmental Imagination


Eric Zakim



11. On Eternity: Homelessness and the Meaning of Homeland


Liam Hoare



12. The Dialogic Encounter between New and Old: The Biblical Intertext in Oz’s Fiction


Nehama Aschkenasy




Part 4. OZ AND THE OTHER: MIZRAHIS AND PALESTINIANS



13. Oz’s Contentious Journey:
In the Land of Israel


Adia Mendelson-Maoz



14. Oz against Himself: Between Political Romanticism and Social Realism in
Black Box


Joshua Leifer



15. “Like Belfast, Rhodesia, or South Africa”: Oz and the Ideologies of Oslo


Moriel Rothman-Zecher



16. And They Lived Separately Ever After: The Two-State Solution as Literary Ending


Vered Karti Shemtov




Part 5. DREAMERS, ICONOCLASTS, AND TRAITORS



17. Of Howling Jackals and Village Scenes: A Lament


Yaron Peleg



18. Exultation, Disillusionment, and Late Inspiration: Oz’s Once and Future Kibbutz


Ranen Omer-Sherman



19. From Tragedy to Betrayal:
Judas and the Subversive Politics of Oz’s Last Act


Sam Sussman



Afterword: About My Father


Fania Oz-Salzberger



Contributors

Further Reading: Critical Resources in English

Index

Yazar hakkında

Ranen Omer-Sherman is Jewish Heritage Fund for Excellence Endowed Chair of Jewish Studies at the University of Louisville. His previous books include
Imagining Kibbutz: Visions of Utopia in Literature and Film and
Israel in Exile: Jewish Writing and the Desert.