Amos Oz

Subsequent editions: London: Chatto & Windus, 1972, 1988.  New York: Lancer Books, 1973. London: Fontana, 1975. New York: Bantam, 1976, 1982. London: Flamingo, 1984. London: Vintage, 1991, 1992, 2001. 

Translations from the English:  Japanese:  Watashi No Mihaeru, tr. Yasuko Murata.  Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten, 1977.  Swedish: Min Michael, tr. Viveka Heyman.  Stockholm: Wahlstrom & Widstrand, 1977.    Finnish translation:  Mieheni Mikhael, tr. Marja Alopaeus.  Helsinki: Tammi, 1978.  German: Mein Michael, tr. Gisela Podlech Reisse. Dusseldorf: Classen, 1977; Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1989, 1997. Rumanian: Sotul Meu, Mihael,  tr. Lidia Ionescu.  Bucharest: Univers, 1981.    Hungarian: Miháél, Miháél, tr. Eszter Molnar.  Budapest: Europa, 1986.    Polish: Moj Michol, tr. Urszula Lada-Zablocka.  Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1991. Greek:  O Micaevl mou, tr. Chrysoula Papadopoulou.  Athens: Kastaniotis, 1997.  Italian: Michael mio, tr. Rosy Molari. Milan: Bompiani, 1975, 1994; Feltrinelli, 2001, 2002.  Turkish: Michael ile Hannah, tr. Gülçin Aldemir. Istanbul: Can, n.d.  [1999]. Chinese: Tr. Zhong Zhiqing. Beijing: Yilin, 1998.  Korean: Tr. Choi Chang-Mo. Seoul: Minumsa, 1998.

המאמר פורסם בגירסה מקוצרת מאוד ב"הארץ - ספרים", בכותרת: "איך קשורות הנשים של עגנון לאלה של א"ב יהושע" (29 במרץ 2007). נוסח זה מופיע בקישור שלהלן. הקובץ המצורף מכיל את המאמר המלא. המאמר סוקר את ספרה של ניצה בן דב ומעלה התייחסויות ליצירתם של ש"י עגנון, א. ב. יהושע ועמוס עוז

Please ask to cite the article, this is a draft. The article is published in Corinna Schlicht (Hrsg.),  Unter Mitarbeit von Stefanie Hohmann: Erzählen – Erinnern. Oberhausen: Karl Maria Laufen, 2007. (= Autoren im Kontext – Duisburger Studienbögen, Band 9). The essay analyzes a peculiar narrative technique: the use of a child perspective and is connected to autobiographical literary language in the fictionalizing of major historical events, choosing as examples Calvino and Amos Oz.

'Los judíos y las palabras' llama la atención del poder de recepción de la escritura y enseña de manera extraordinaria una doble continuidad en lo que hoy podemos entender como judaísmo: en la autoría entre padre e hija y en el título entre los judíos y las palabras. Los judíos están íntimamente relacionados con las palabras y las palabras son reconocidas como más antiguas que el hombre. Entre los judíos, padre e hija en este caso, y las palabras, entre padre e hija, no hay sino interpretaciones que registrarían en el fondo la relación entre los judíos y las palabras. La continuidad entre los judíos y las palabras no muestra, por tanto, una línea de sangre, sino una línea de texto. Las palabras son, también, más antiguas que el judaísmo.

Literary representations of Eastern-European Hebrew in Hebrew fiction allude to specific phonological features of either characters' Yiddish accent, particularly in female characters, or their liturgical Hebrew reading traditions, especially in male characters. Comparison with parallel representations of Eastern-European Jews in world literature situates Modern Hebrew fiction both in line with the general tendency of representing Jewish non-native speech and as a special category of "diasporic Hebrew" representation against Sabra Hebrew.

What is the relationship between Mizrahi feminism and Israeli ultranationalism? What is the relevance of gender justice activism to the 2014 Gaza War and Israel’s foreign policy?

Wrapped in the Flag of Israel Second Edition examines neoliberal bureaucracy in the Global South using feminist critical race theories. It interrogates the relationship between the State of Israel and its Mizrahi single mothers who are at the forefront of Mizrahi feminism. It also presents a model of bureaucracy as divine cosmology that preempts the agency of disenfranchised Mizrahim who are Israel’s demographic majority. Mizrahi protests fall flat when the Israel-Palestine conflict dominates the headlines. While most studies of neoliberal bureaucracy employ a Foucauldian or Marxian lens, this book illustrates how Israeli bureaucracy draws on a theological essence that fuses religion, gender, and race into the foundations of citizenship. It sets out to understand why Mizrahi mothers remain loyal to a state that injures them though its bureaucratic system.

The extensive Afterword to the Second Edition connects intra-Jewish racial and gendered dynamics to the 2014 Gaza War. It tracks sequences that began with social protest and ended with elections that bolstered Israel’s political right. In between came bloodletting between the IDF, the Palestinian Authority, and Israel’s neighboring Arab states. The 2014 Gaza War was a watershed, but not only in the Israel-Palestine conflict. Under the smokescreen of war, Israel accelerated neoliberal economic reform. The first victims of this restructuring were Mizrahi single mothers. Palestinians, however, would pay the highest price for Israel’s Mizrahi-Ashkenazi rift.

L’ampia produzione letteraria e saggistica dell’ultimo cinquantennio ha notevolmente ridefinito la figura di Giuda, sottolineandone la dimensione umana e tragica e, al contempo, indagando le molteplici sfumature della sua vicenda. Anche l’ultimo romanzo di Amos Oz si inserisce in questa scia.

Allusions to Henrik Ibsen’s plays in the works of two prominent Israeli modernist writers, Amos Oz’s autobiographical A Tale of Love and Darkness (2004) and David Grossman’s The Zigzag Kid (1994) examined in the context of the Israeli reception of Ibsen in the 1950s and 1960s. To establish the variety of meanings Ibsen’s plays had for the audiences of the Habimah production of Peer Gynt in 1952 and The Kameri production of Hedda Gabler in 1966, this article draws on newspaper reviews and actors’ memoirs, as well as providing an analysis of Leah Goldberg’s translation of Peer Gynt. It emerges that both authors enlisted Ibsen in their exploration of the myths surrounding the formation of Israeli nationhood and identity

For centuries, Judas has aroused extreme emotions. By some, he is regarded as the greatest traitor in the history of the world, and by others he is considered the only apostle who has understood the salvific mission of Jesus Christ. Judas is a distinctive and extremely popular figure in culture. The considerations in the presented article concern the literary and cinematographic portraits of Judas Iscariot.I am reconstructing his story on the basis of the famous novel published in recent years, i.e. Judasby Amos Oz and the film The Last Temptation of Christ by Martin Scorsese, which was inspired byNikos Kazantzakis' book of the same title.

This communication intends to make a reflection  about the trajectory of the character Gerd Wiesler, a spy who works for the STASI, the dreaded secret police of the GDR ( German Democratic Republic ) in the film The Lifes of Others( 2006), the debut of filmaker Florian von Donnesmarck. The plot takes place between 1984 and 1993 and tells the story of  Wiesler who is assigned to spy a couple of artists : the praywright Georg Dreyman and the actress Christa-Maria. Filmed basically in shadowy colors, with typical elements of thriller, this movie was a success of public and critical, receiving numerous awards including the Best Foreign Film Oscar in 2007. Spying the couple, Wiesler gradually becomes affectionate. The proposal is analyze the transformation of agent behavior, considering especially the concepts of voyeurism in the cinema, and aesthetics.

Representations of a life’s end generally play a decisive role in biographical storytelling. As the very last chapter they give a final status to all previous events. It is against this background this paper aims at a synopsis of the New Testament’s accounts of the dying of Jesus juxtaposed with their modern literary appropriations. What happens with the structure of biographical narratives if death is not the last chapter? Grounded on a specific understanding of the notion of “narrative of dying”, the paper first identifies this very genre within the gospel’s passion narratives. The observations on the biblical basic script – among others the key role of the last words – are then related to two novels: Amos Oz’s Judas (2014) represents Jesus’s dying in a complex anachronic narrative which takes the betrayer’s viewpoint as its focus. Franz Heinrich Achermann’s The Antichrist (1939) includes the re-enactment of the Passion within a Sci-Fi novel, merging it with the Second Coming of Christ. The observations made give rise to final remarks regarding both the genre “narrative of dying” as the so-called ‘Jesus Novel’.

Subsequent editions: London:  Chatto & Windus, 1991.  New York: Harvest, 1992.  London: Vintage, 1992, 2001.

Danish translation: At kende en kvinde, tr. Ane Ipsen. Copenhagen: Samlaren, 1991; Gylldendals Bogklubber, date?.  Greek translation:  H Gunaivka pou Gnwvrisa,  tr. Maria Chorianthi.  Athens: Psichogios, 1992. Slovak translation: Poznat’ zenu, tr. Pavel Vilikovsky, Bratislava: Slovensky spisovatel’,1995.  Turkish:  Bir kadını tanımak, tr. Gülçin Aldemir. Istanbul: Can, 1996.  Chinese translation: Tr. Fu Hao & Ke Yambing. Beijing: Yilin, 1999. Korean: Tr. Chor Chang Mo. Seoul: Open Books, 2001.

Subsequent editions: New York:  Harcourt Brace, 2001. London: Vintage, 2002.

Finnish translation: meri on sama, tr. Kristiina Lampola & Mikko Rimminen, Helsinki: Tammi, 2002. Swedish translation: Samma Hav, tr. Rose-Marie Nielsen, Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand, 2002.

Subsequent editions: New York:  Harcourt Brace, 1997. New York: Harvest, 1998. Audio tape narrated by George Guidall, Prince Frederick MD: Recorded Books Inc., 1999.
Read as The Late Book on BBC Radio 4,  1999.
Japanese translation: Chikashitu-no Pansa, tr. Yasuko Murata.  Tokyo: Michitani, 1998. Korean translation: Forest of Knowledge (Nexus Press), 2007.

how Israeli-Jewish and Palestinian authors imagine their respective national collectives and how they articulate the terms of participation in these collectives. Reading key prose texts of Israeli and Palestinian authors, both fiction and nonfiction, she comments not only on the cultural and intellectual life of Israel/Palestine but also on its place within Anglo-American academia as well as on the theoretical paradigms that frame its scholarly treatment. Lucid, nuanced, and theoretically sophisticated, Bernard's book is one of the very best with which I am familiar on literature and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and should become standard reading for all those interested in the region, its politics, and its culture. As suggested, Rhetorics of Belonging is as much a study of the literature of Israel/Palestine as an intervention in the current state of postcolonial studies. In fact, it is a plea for that lit-erature's centrality to the field. As such, it is one of the most serious and sustained endeavors to think theory in relation to the literature of Israel/Palestine. As Bernard points out, notwithstanding the centrality of the "Question of Palestine" to the political (and moral) mission of postcolonial studies, postcolonial scholars all but ignore the cultural production of the region. The question of theory is double. Current scholarship on Israel/Palestine is indeed often informed by theoretical discussions, mainly postcolonial studies, deconstruction, and fem-inism, but by and large it simply applies such theoretical concepts to the texts it examines and eschews the more difficult task of interrogating these in light of the particularity of the historical and geographic circumstances in Israel/Palestine. Simultaneously and similarly, postcolonial scholars tend to refrain from asking how the paradigms of the field are challenged by histories and geographies that lie beyond the pale of anglophone, francophone, and to a lesser extent hispanophone cultures. Bernard's interrogation of the theoretical terms of the postcolonial in the context of Israel/Palestine thus provides not only a timely and much-needed reevaluation of the scholarship of Israel/Palestine but also a case study in the way those histories and geographies that lie at the margins of the Anglo-American theoretical purview test its premises. Bernard suggests that the lack of interest in Israel/Palestine on the part of postcolonial studies is linked to the untimeliness of the political and theoretical framework that seems most suitable to the study of that region. Both the production and the reception, whether local or metropolitan, of Israeli and Palestinian literatures underscore the centrality of the question of the nation to these literatures. Yet from the mid-1990s on-after the heyday of "nation and narration"-postcolonial interest in that question dissipated, dismissing the investment of local literati in national narration as a belated attachment to a notion already proved illusory. Underscoring, on the contrary, the importance of national narration to one's understanding of current social, cultural, and political formations in Israel/Palestine, Ber-nard retrieves Fredric Jameson's "national allegory," even as she rejects the simplistic narrative model one tends to associate with that term. Her project in this book is to show in what

Subsequent editions: New York: Harcourt Brace, 1991. London: Chatto & Windus, 1975.  London: Fontana, 1976.  New York: Bantam, 1979. London: Flamingo, 1986.  New York: Harvest, 1991.  London: Vintage, 1992.

Spanish translation: Tocar el agua tocar el viento, tr. Eduardo Goligorsky, Barcelona: Pomaire, 1980.  Polish translation: Dotknij Wiatru, Dotknij Wody, tr. Danuta Sekalska, Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Literaskie MUZA, 1998. Korean translation: The Open Books Co. 2007.

This article examines Oz’s novel The Same Sea (1999) and argues that it marks the novelist’s attempt to join a new phase in Israeli literature. Comparing The Same Sea to two novels by Yoel Hoffmann, one of the most famous representatives of this phase, the article sheds light on Oz’s struggle to balance between the writing norms that helped establish his status as “the shaman of the tribe” and the new norms, associated with Israeli postmodernism.

מעשה הכתיבה ראשיתו במבט של אורפאוס המסב פניו לאחור. הצהרה זו של מוריס בלאנשו משמשת בספר זה כנקודת מוצא לקריאה פרשנית ביצירה הספרותית־העברית בת־ימינו, בניסיון להצביע על הזיקה של מיתוס ליצירה.
אורפאוס היורד שאולה, איקרוס הנוסק למרומים, נרקיס הכּלֶה בתשוקתו אל דמותו הנשקפת במים, תמוז הגווע ושב לתחייה, הם ועמיתיהם גיבורי המיתוסים של העמים השונים חושפים את הרובד הסמוי של חיינו, בהצביעם על האַלמוֹתי והנצחי שבקיומנו הנידון לִכליה. בעגנם את היצירה האנושית ברבדיה הבראשיתיים של ההוויה, הם מספרים את סיפורה של הנפש האנושית, על צפונותיה.

Subsequent editions: London:  Secker & Warburg, 1974. New York: Bantam, 1974. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979.  New York: Harvest, 1985.  London: Flamingo, 1989.

Swedish translation: Nagon Annanstans, tr. Viveka Heyman.  Stockholm: Wahlstrom & Widstrand, 1975.    Finnish translation:  Ehkä jossain muualla, suomentanut Kai Kaila.  Helsinki: Tammi, 1977.  Chinese: Beijing: Yilin 1998.

Introduction to a special issue on Amos Oz, JIH 38, no. 2 (2020)

Often regarded as the country’s leading intellectual, the Israeli novelist and political essayist Amos Oz (1939–2018) was fond of describing himself as using two different pens, the first used to write work of prose and fiction, and the other – to criticize the government and advocate for a political change. The idea behind this special issue is to revisit the two pens parable by bringing together scholars from various disciplines to assess Amos Oz’s dual role in Israeli culture and society as an immensely popular novelist and a leading public intellectual. Next to offering an intellectual portrait, this introduction highlights some of Oz’s seminal works, examines their reception, revisits key political and literary debates he was involved in, and traces some of the connections between the two realms of his activity.