Under this Blazing Light (Canto original series)

By Amos Oz

Book Overview

Perhaps most of the essays in this book are substitutes for stories that I have not managed to write, says Amos Oz in the preface to Under This Blazing Light. Published for the first time in English, this collection of essays reveals the personal and political thoughts of Israel's most celebrated novelist. The essays in this volume put a unique perspective on the author's own experiences and development, and reveal a complex and deeply human figure of practical political influence as well as of significant literary stature. Oz's refreshing blend of skepticism and idealism will win for him new readers, while delighting those who will recognize here the qualities evident in his other writings. Relevant in light of recent developments in the Middle East, the topics covered include an examination of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a dispute between Right and Right; a look at the meaning of socialism in the Israeli context; reflections on the concept of Homeland and on the nature of the Kibbutz; and reflections on the character of Zionism. The essays also include portraits of several Jewish writers and thinkers whose ideas and themes in one way or another have proved influential or determinative for Amos Oz himself. Amos Oz is widely considered to be Israel's most famous living writer. His fifteen books include My Michael, Touch the Water, Touch the Wind, In the Land of Israel, Black Box, To Know a Woman, and Fima. His work has been translated into twenty-nine languages, and he has received several major literary awards. He is currently a Professor of Modern Hebrew Literature at Ben-Gurion University.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0521443679
• ISBN13: 9780521443678
• Release Date: March 1995
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 220 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.7" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

Oz as Thinker

Besides being a novelist of great talent and dexterity, Amos Oz is a thinker of no little subtlety. This collection of pieces, Under This Blazing Light, were mainly written from the 60s to the late 70s, and are chiefly concerned with Hebrew letters, Zionism, the meaning and practice of socialist Zionism, and life on the kibbutz (in the sixties and seventies). Here one is struck by Oz's great humanity; his expansive soul; even in his most harshly written pieces (for example, he rips the writer Yosef Brenner a new one in his acceptance speech for the fiction prize named after Brenner!) Oz always finds a redeeming feature, some element to round out and soften the picture.