Imprint: Vintage
Published: 04/05/2017
ISBN: 9781784701956
Length: 288 Pages
Dimensions: 198mm x 18mm x 129mm
Weight: 202g
RRP: £9.99
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.
Imprint: Vintage
Published: 04/05/2017
ISBN: 9781784701956
Length: 288 Pages
Dimensions: 198mm x 18mm x 129mm
Weight: 202g
RRP: £9.99
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.
A very absorbing addition to his remarkable oeuvre
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.
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.
A big, beautiful novel… Funny, wise and provoking.
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.
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.
A masterpiece: command of the word, mastery of construct, the ability to stimulate all the senses of the reader.
Judas is a rich and thrilling novel, one of the most interesting books published this year.
Amos Oz belongs to the great authors of world literature