In a wide-ranging conversation, Israel’s greatest novelist talks about working the land, making art, and Natalie Portman
By Vox Tablet
There’s
no other living Israeli author who is as well known around the world as
Amos Oz. Inside Israel, he’s one of the country’s most respected
cultural figures. Oz has lived a tumultuous life. When he was 10 years
old, he witnessed the founding of the Jewish state. When he was 12 years
old, his mother committed suicide. When he was 15, he joined a kibbutz
and changed his last name to Oz, Hebrew for “strength.” He eventually
left the kibbutz for the desert because of his son’s asthma, but as he
tells Vox Tablet contributor Daniel Estrin, he still dreams of kibbutz
life at least once a week. In his newest short story collection, Between
Friends, he revisits the early years of the kibbutz, when the
collective farms were still a wild Israeli ideological experiment.
Estrin sat with Amos Oz in his home in Tel Aviv for a far-ranging
discussion about the new book, his love of Hebrew, his predictions for
Israel’s future, and a bit of celebrity gossip. [Running time: 27:45.]Click here to listen.
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