Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. 262 p. Audience: General/trade.

Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. 262 p. Audience: General/trade.

Connecting readers with great books since 1972! Used books may not include

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Hardcover This item shows wear from consistent use but remains in good

Hardcover This item shows wear from consistent use but remains in good readable condition. It may have marks on or in it, and may show other signs of previous use or shelf wear. May have minor creases or signs of wear on dust jacket. Packed with care, shipped promptly.

Signed by Author A compelling tale of a haunted past by the distinguished

Signed by Author A compelling tale of a haunted past by the distinguished Israeli writer; Oz never disappoints! This is a Fine copy of the First American Edition, translated from the Hebrew by Nicholas de Lange. Dark blue paper boards with blue cloth spine and silver lettering. This copy has been SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR on the FFEP. The dustjacket is unclipped; in an archival plastic protector. Size: 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall.

[6], 262, [4] pages. Signed and inscribed on the front-free endpaper by the

[6], 262, [4] pages. Signed and inscribed on the front-free endpaper by the author. Inscription reads: To Jeff, Shalom, Amos Oz. Amos Oz (born Amos Klausner; 4 May 1939-28 December 2018) was an Israeli writer, novelist, journalist, and intellectual. He was also a professor of Hebrew literature at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He was the author of 40 books, including novels, short story collections, children's books, and essays, and his work has been published in 45 languages, more than that of any other Israeli writer. He was the recipient of many honors and awards, among them the Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels, the Legion of Honour of France, the Israel Prize, the Goethe Prize, the Prince of Asturias Award in Literature, the Heinrich Heine Prize, and the Franz Kafka Prize. Oz is regarded as one of "Israel's most prolific writers and respected intellectuals", as The New York Times worded it in an obituary. For more than twenty years, Yoel Ravid worked for the Israeli secret service, going on dangerous missions to Helsinki, Vienna, Bangkok. His uncanny instinct, his ability to sense the truth, his power to remember the smallest detail made him an invaluable agent. Yoel is now retired. He has just rented a house in Ramat Lotan, where he lives with his mother, mother-in-law, his daughter, and the ghost of his wife. Life itself seems to have to have become a secret code that he cannot decipher. This is a brilliant novel--written with poetry and humor--of the madness, chaos, and violence beneath the surface of everyday existence, and of a man desperately trying to escape the past. Derived from a Kirkus review: Peerless Israeli storyteller Oz presents 18 months in the life of painfully self-contained Yoel Raviv, retired from the Israeli Secret Service and trying to escape the ghosts of his professional life and his dead wife-a woman he's still struggling to know. Bedeviled by memories of his wife Ivria, accidentally electrocuted in his absence on business in Helsinki; of his servitude to agency contact Yirmiyahu Cordovero ("Le Patron"); and of an obsessively recurring series of frozen images-the statue of a cat mysteriously springing free of its base; the figure of Edgar Linton from Wuthering Heights; a wheelchair-bound beggar; a copy of Mrs. Dalloway left behind in Helsinki-Yoel reacts in two conflicting ways. Frantic to be left alone, he changes his name, retreats to a new house in a Tel Aviv suburb, and refuses a posting to Bangkok. At the same time, he reaches out equally frantically to his strong-willed, epileptic daughter Netta, about to be conscripted, and to his quarreling mother and mother-in-law, by asking them all to live with him; he also begins a robotic friendship with real-estate agent Arik Krantz and an equally passive love affair with next-door neighbor Annemarie Vermont, shepherded by her oppressively approving bother Ralph. Floating through this tangle of relationships, Yoel keeps telling himself that things will work out, that tomorrow is another day, but he's wrong-as he sees when his mother and Netta's lover Duby Krantz tell him off for his inability to accept people without controlling them, and when he's unable to get forgiven by the father of the agent killed in Bangkok in his place. Slowly, slowly, Oz thaws out his likable, paralyzed hero and returns him to provisional membership in the human race. A meditative third-person confessional of hauntingly quiet power-and a treasure for readers who think contemporary novels carry too much plot.