"If you ask me to summarize what my books are about in one word, I will say 'families.' If you ask me to summarize them in two words: 'unhappy families.' If you allow me more than two, well, then you'll have to read my books."
"The most devoted Europeans you can find belonged to my parents' generation, the only people who really loved Europe and felt they were Europeans to the core, rather than Bulgarian patriots or German patriots or French patriots or whatever. My parents, these "rootless intellectuals" or "cosmopolitans" or whatever else they were derided as, fled to Jerusalem because Europe did not love them back. This unrequited love to Europe has left traces of deep ambivalence among Israelis towards Europe that lasts until today."
"I love Israel even when I can't stand it."
-Amos Oz
I heard Israeli author Amos Oz speaking tonight on the occasion of Humboldt's Mosse Lectures, which have since 1997 invited famous authors to read from their works. This year, the theme is "A Literary Atlas: Poets and their Localities".
In a word: amazing. Oz was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize this year, and he has a gift for storytelling that translates in person, as well. The whole audience was absolutely entranced by him, whether he was reading from his most famous work in Germany - "A Tale of Love and Darkness", which is about his parent's journey to and beginnings in the early state of Israel - or his new collection of short stories, published here in the New Yorker, entitled "Waiting."
Oz is also a vocal proponent of a two-state solution, and I think he handled the to-be-expected political questions from the peanut gallery with grace.
I am impressed, thrilled and inspired...
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