'An intensely personal and moving story... HEART-WRENCHING' THE TIMES
Love and darkness are just two of the powerful forces that run through Amos Oz's extraordinary, moving story. He takes us on a seductive journey through his childhood and adolescence, along Jerusalem's wartorn streets in the 1940s and '50s, and into the infernal marriage of two kind, well-meaning people: his fussy, logical father, and his dreamy, romantic mother. Caught between them is one small boy with the weight of generations on his shoulders. And at the tragic heart of the story is the suicide of his mother, when Amos was twelve-and-a-half years old.
Oz's story dives into the saga of a Jewish love-hate affair with Europe that sweeps from Vilna and Odessa, via Poland and Prague, to Israel. Farce and heartbreak, history and humanity make up this magical portrait of the artist who witnessed the birth of a nation. This is a memoir like no other, and one that cries out to be read and wept over.
'A tragicomic saga of love and books, of Jewish life and immigrant life the world over, and of the universal madness of families. Read it now - I promise you won't read a more brilliant book in a long, long while' DAILY MAIL
'MESMERISING' INDEPENDENT