Judas

Description

Amos Oz's first major novel in a decade - since A Tale of Love and Darkness, which sold over 2 million copies worldwide The Israeli master's exceptional final novel SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE 2017 Shmuel - a young, idealistic student - has abandoned his studies in Jerusalem, taking a live-in job as a companion to a cantankerous old man. But Shmuel quickly becomes obsessed with the taciturn Atalia, a woman of enchanting beauty, who also lives in the house. As the household's tangled, tragic past becomes apparent, so too does story behind the birth of the state of Israel. Journeying back into the deep past, Judas is a love story like no other by a master storyteller at the height of his powers. 'A hero of mine, a moral as well as literary giant' Simon Schama 'One of his boldest works of all' Boyd Tonkin, Financial Times 'Amos Oz...brought so much beauty, so much love, and a vision of peace to our lives. Please hold him in your hearts and read his books' Natalie Portman Judas is the first novel selected for the Amos Oz reading circle established by Natalie Portman.

Born in Jerusalem in 1939, Amos Oz was the internationally acclaimed author of many novels and essay collections, translated into over forty languages, including his brilliant semi-autobiographical work, A Tale of Love and Darkness. His last novel, Judas, was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2017 and won the Yasnaya Polyana Foreign Fiction Award. He received several international awards, including the Prix Femina, the Israel Prize, the Goethe Prize, the Frankfurt Peace Prize and the 2013 Franz Kafka Prize. He died in December 2018.

Judas is many-layered, thought-provoking and - in its love story - delicate as a chrysalis, this is an old-fashioned novel of ideas that is strikingly and compellingly modern. -- Peter Stanford * Observer * A very absorbing addition to his remarkable oeuvre -- Andrew Motion * Guardian * This book is compassionate as well as painfully provocative, a contribution to some sort of deeper listening to the dissonances emerging from deep within the politics and theology of Israel and Palestine. -- Rowan Williams * New Statesman * After almost two dozen books that track changes in both heart and state with untiring strength and subtlety, the Israeli master has delivered one of the boldest of all his works... Nicholas de Lange, Oz's distinguished translator, steers these virtuoso transitions between debate and domesticity with unerring skill... Oz can imagine, and inhabit, treachery of every stripe. But he keeps faith with the art of fiction. -- Boyd Tonkin * Financial Times * A big, beautiful novel... Funny, wise and provoking. -- Kate Saunders * The Times * challenging, complex and strangely compelling... The ideas at the novel's centre have great vitality and force. The philosophical passages bristle with linguistic energy, scriptural references and dense detail, vividly conveyed in Nicholas de Lange's translation. -- Eva Hoffman * Spectator * It is rich in material to grapple with. Oz engages with urgent questions while retaining his right as a novelist to fight shy of answers: it's a mark of his achievement that the result isn't frustrating but tantalising. -- Anthony Cummins * Daily Telegraph * A masterpiece: command of the word, mastery of construct, the ability to stimulate all the senses of the reader. * La Reppublica * Judas is a rich and thrilling novel, one of the most interesting books published this year. * Haaretz * Amos Oz belongs to the great authors of world literature * Suddeutsche Zeitung *