★★★★★
k.A.
03.06.2026
ean-shopping.de
Diese Anthologie mit Amos Oz ist ein wahrer Genuss und eine wunderbare Zusammenstellung literarischer Meisterwerke. Ich empfehle sie jedem, der an tiefgründige und fesselnde Geschichten interessiert ist.
★★★★★
k.A.
03.06.2026
ean-shopping.de
Diese Anthologie mit den Werken von Amos Oz ist ein wahrhaft großartiges und tiefgründiges Leseerlebnis, das man unbedingt genießen sollte. Die Zusammenstellung ist literarisch reich und fesselnd.
Tel Ilan in which Amos Oz’s characters live is not some poor oppressed Shtetl in Eastern Europe but a 100-year-old village in modern-day Israel that is being transformed into a weekend and holiday spot for city people from Haifa with health-food stores, art galleries, fashion boutiques, gourmet restaurants and ethnic furniture shops. It’s a pretty place surrounded by vineyards, fields and almond trees with villas, flower-filled gardens, ornamental ponds and the amenities of modern life. And yet, hardly any of the inhabitants the author introduces, be they estate agents, schoolteachers, librarians, doctors, students, ex-Knesset-members, widowers and widows etc. are happy. Nearly everyone is beset by loneliness, frustration and an inner void, some experience inexplicable feelings of apprehension.Mr. Oz brings his characters and their surroundings to life but what he gives us are not interconnected short stories but moments in the protagonists’ lives. There is no development, no resolution or closure to any of the situations and in the end we’re left with a series of loose episodes that are neither particularly idiosyncratically Jewish nor do they transmit any message. I have no idea what to think about the last chapter which is totally out of context.My other complaint is that Mr. Oz uses an awful lot of filler material, describes at length how someone or other makes a cup of coffee, has a shower or prepares a meal and he is very repetitive. When people take a walk around town we’re informed again and again of the names of the streets and squares they walk along and those dark cypresses must have been mentioned about 50 times.The best example of filler material is the library scene in which he describes in pedantic detail several irrelevant characters that appear in only a couple of sentences and are never heard of again :“Two older women came in, one small and square-shaped, with baggy three-quarter length shorts and dyed red hair, the other with short, grey hair and protruding eyes behind thick glasses.” ... “Then a bespectacled young girl came into the library. She had full hips and was wearing a flowery blouse and tight-fitting jeans.”...”Another reader came in. This time it was a woman in her mid-seventies, shrivelled and brisk, dressed in a light summer dress that was much too young for her, with silver bracelets on her skinny, tanned arms and a double row of amber beads round her neck.”Considering how short and repetitive the book is and how much space is given to irrelevant detail, I had the distinct feeling that Mr. Oz didn’t really have all that much to say.