Black Box

by Amos Oz

Published 30 June 1988
This novel concerns itself with the frailties and variety of human nature, and looks at the ambivalences in marriage, family, fanaticism and political terror. The novel mirrors the social, political and religious complexities of life in Israel today. Amos Oz is one of Israel's foremost writers. Born in Jerusalem in l939, he is author of "My Michael" which was filmed, "Touch the Water, Touch the Wind", "The Hill of Evil Counsel", "In the Land of Israel", and "A Perfect Peace". He lives in Arad in Israel.

In the Land of Israel

by Amos Oz

Published 13 October 1983

The Hill of Evil Counsel

by Amos Oz

Published October 1978
The Hill of Evil Counsel is a fusion of history and imaginative narrative, re-creating the twilight world of Jerusalem during the fading days of the British Mandate. In these three closely linked stories, Oz vividly evokes the stifling atmosphere of impending crisis as real personalities rub shoulders with fictional characters whose hopes and fears are hauntingly portrayed.

Where the Jackals Howl

by Amos Oz

Published September 1981

Where the Jackals Howl is prize-winning author Amos Oz's first collection of stories. On publication it received immediate critical acclaim and revealed Oz to be a master craftsman probing the emotional depths of his characters.

The lives of ordinary Israelis are set against the backdrop of community life in a Kibbutz. The fate of these individuals, their drives, ambitions and idiosyncrasies, are grounded by the physical and social structure of their community as Oz portrays their world as a microcosm of the wider world.


Unto Death

by Amos Oz

Published April 1976

Unto Death contains two beautiful short novels linked by death and destruction.

Crusade is set in 1096 - a year of sinister omens. Count Guillaume of Touron sets out on a crusade to Jerusalem and on the way he serves his God by killing any Jews he meets. But will the Count find the peace of mind he seeks when he faces the terrible realities of war in the Holy Land?

In Late Love Oz portrays an elderly professor living alone in Tel Aviv, a man neither loving nor loved. His last mission is to expose the plight of his fellow Russian Jews and alert the people of Israel to the conspiracy that threatens them. But nobody wants to listen...


Touch the Water, Touch the Wind

by Amos Oz

Published 20 March 1975

As the Germans advance into Poland in 1939, Elisha Pomeranz, a Jewish mathematician and watchmaker, escapes into the wintry forest, leaving behind his beautiful, intelligent wife, Stefa.

After the war, having evaded the concentration camps, they begin to build new lives - Stefa in Stalin's Russia and Elisha in Israel, where, as they seek their reunion, another war is brewing.


My Michael

by Amos Oz

Published 20 April 1972

One of Amos Oz's earliest and most famous novels, My Michael was a sensation upon its initial publication in 1968 and it has an enduring power to surprise and mesmerize.

‘His characters…ride the river of history’ New Yorker

'A beautiful work of great depth and lingers in the mind as a lyric song to his country's people as much as a moving love story' Arthur Miller

1950s Jerusalem.


Hannah Gonen has just married and is thrilled and pained by her young well-meaning husband, Michael. Haunted by her dreams of two boys who disappeared from Jerusalem after the establishment of the state of Israel, Hannah gradually withdraws from her husband into a private world of fantasy and suppressed desires.


This 2015 edition includes an updated introduction from the author.


A Perfect Peace

by Amos Oz

Published 1 January 1900
"Oz's strangest, riskiest, and richest novel." --Washington Post Book World

Israel, just before the Six-Day War. On a kibbutz, the country's founders and their children struggle to come to terms with their land and with each other. The messianic father exults in accomplishments that had once been only dreams; the son longs to establish an identity apart from his father; the fragile young wife is out of touch with reality; and the gifted and charismatic "outsider" seethes with emotion. Through the interplay of these brilliantly realized characters, Oz evokes a drama that is chillingly, strikingly universal.

"[Oz is] a peerless, imaginative chronicler of his country's inner and outer transformations." --Independent (UK)


Elsewhere, Perhaps

by Amos Oz

Published 11 February 1974

The Kibbutz of Metsudat Ram lies in the valley of Jordan, close to the border. Old and young, happy and discontented, the settlers go about their lives as the artillery rumbles in the distance and the war planes shriek overhead.

Among them are Reuven, the school teacher whose true calling is poetry, his teenaged daughter, the capricious Noga, and Ezra, the Kibbutz's truck-driver.

As the seasons pass, so too do storms of love and passion, conflict and misunderstanding, gossip and scandal - all threatening to tear apart a community held together by necessity and idealism.