In Amos Oz’s epic memoir, A Tale of Love and Darkness (Sipur al Ahava ve-Choshech, 2002), Oz describes a post-World War II Jerusalem populated by anxious and impoverished European Jews, living under a British-imposed curfew and behind iron window grates, who spend their time “bent over a sheet of paper, correcting, erasing, writing, and polishing” (298). Observing the adults’ behaviour, the young Amos decides that when he grows up, he wants to “be a book”:
Not a writer but a book. And that was from fear.
Because it was slowly dawning on those whose families had not arrived in Israel that the Germans had killed them all…. And who …
Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are not a subscriber, please click here to read about membership. All our articles have been written recently by experts in their field, more than 95% of them university professors.