About the Author

AMOS OZ (1939-2018) was born in Jerusalem. He was the recipient of the Prix Femina, the Frankfurt Peace Prize, the Goethe Prize, the Primo Levi Prize, and the National Jewish Book Award, among other international honors. His work, including A Tale of Love and Darkness and In the Land of Israel, has been translated into forty-four languages.

Reviews

The narrator of Oz's tender and affecting 12th novel (after Don't Call it Night) is an Israeli looking back on the summer of 1947, a pivotal time in his and his country's existence. In that last summer of British rule, Proffy (short for Professor) was "twelve and a quarter," a typically precise statement from the boy he was, obsessed with words and their meanings, and the man he has become (perhaps Oz himself). The word that is most confusing to Proffy is "traitor," since he is accused by his friends of having betrayed their secret "underground" group (they have grandiose plans to drive out the English and fight the Arabs) and their country via his friendship with a British policeman. This man, Sgt. Dunlop, a kind and vulnerable loner who proclaims that his heart "is in thrall to the Chosen People," has asked Proffy to teach him modern Hebrew (he already speaks the language with biblical cadences). The conflicted Proffy is drawn to Dunlop, who is officially his enemy. Proffy is a fully rounded creation: a bookish adolescent with a vivid imagination, patriotic fervor and an incomplete understanding of events. His preoccupation with heroic fantasies and games and his burgeoning sexual curiosity are charming and funny. Yet his knowledge of the dangers in daily life‘his parents both pursue clandestine activities against the British‘makes him mature for his age. Though Oz is oddly clumsy and obvious with the "panther in the basement" image, in all other respects the novel delicately investigates its theme. The question of treachery has a timely resonance‘Rabin's assassin called him a traitor to his country‘and this moral conundrum deepens the narrative's implications. Yet this is a gentle, unassuming story, both serious and amusing, told with perfect pitch and a humane awareness of life's paradoxes and ironies. U.K. and translation rights: Deborah Owen. (Oct.)

Set in 1947 Jerusalem, Oz's (Don't Call It Night, LJ 6/15/96) delightful story of a 12-year-old boy addresses the concepts of friendship, betrayal, and the meaning of loyalty. As second-in-command of a make-believe underground unit fighting the British domination of Palestine, Proffy is willing to make heroic sacrifices in the struggle to create a Jewish state. The trouble is that he also develops a friendship with a rather shy, gentle British soldier interested in learning Hebrew‘the discovery of which leads his comrades to accuse him of treason "because you love the enemy....Loving the enemy, Proffy, is worse than betraying secrets....[It] is the height of treachery." Filled with marvelous word play ("What connection is there between defect and descent...saboteur and stabber, mole and rat?") that has been admirably rendered by the translator, this novel makes us stop and consider the meaning of the words themselves. Highly recommended for both public and academic libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/97.]‘David W. Henderson, Eckerd Coll. Lib., St. Petersberg, Fla.