A Tale of Love and Darkness

by Amos Klausner

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In concentrating on his childhood in a suburb of Jerusalem, Amos Oz’s memoir explores the reasons that his mother took her own life when he was twelve years old. He addresses his departure from his family’s customs and decision to change his last name to Oz. Reaching back into the past before his birth, Oz reconstructs his family’s formation and links those developments to significant points in his own early life. As the autobiography progresses, the emphasis on understanding his mother’s suicide intensifies. The book was translated from Hebrew into English by Nicholas de Lange.

Growing up in an intellectual family, Oz also became aware of the distinctions between his father’s scholarly life and his mother’s nostalgia for her European upbringing. While steeped in Russian literary tradition, his father nevertheless insisted that the boy learn Hebrew but not Russian. The author considers his position within a literary heritage with his great-uncle as a key example of a prominent Israeli writer. Oz writes of his growing awareness of the political responsibilities of the artist that should play a role in scholarship. Throughout, he sees to understand the roots of his mother’s unhappiness and the reasons her stories could not relieve it.

The tragic family history that he relates includes persecution and killings in Russia, with other family members’ subsequent relocation to what was then British-Mandate Palestine. The inability to reconcile culture with repression, he comes to see, generated their mistrusting attitude toward Europe overall and Russia in particular. Oz explains how his upbringing helped him to understand the importance of establishing Israel as a Jewish state, but also his conviction of forging positive relationships with Palestinians in and around the nation. The themes of accommodation and negotiation, with the emphasis on peaceful co-existence, emerge strongly, in part with an eye toward the current security and future success of the children.

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