FOOTNOTES
Amos Oz’s
A Tale of Love and Darkness (2004)
(trans. from the Hebrew by Nicholas de Lange)

AMOS OZ’s memoir, A Tale of Love and Darkness (2004), is now out in paperback with an exquisite cover depicting a small boy lying under the sky lost in the plot of a novel, an obvious reflection of the author’s books-filled childhood. Set against the backdrop of the birth of Israel as a nation, this potent fusion of turbulent history and family story documents the growth and development of a writer and his lifelong quest to come to grips with his mother’s suicide. Though this memoir can be heavy-going at times (after all, it is more than a childhood memoir), it is engaging and definitely worth your time. First published in Hebrew in 2002, A Tale of Love and Darkness is the winner of the 2005 Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Literary Prize for Nonfiction.