Scenes from Village Life

Oz beautifully captures the interplay of tensions in each character.

Helen Brown, Daily Telegraph

This is a dark book, with a dark vision of contemporary Israel… The whole, rich, disturbing mixture makes one feel as if something dark is digging away at the foundations, something unnameable ready to emerge. It is one of the most powerful books you will read about present-day Israel.

David Herman, Jewish Chronicle

Oz's characters might be drawn from Chekhov: their lives seem an irresoluble muddle of sorrow, baffled hopes and missed chances; his compassion for them makes the reader care deeply about them, too. This is a wise, beautiful and enduring book

Richard Davenport-Hines, Spectator

Admirably rendered in English by Oz's longtime translator, Nicholas de Lange, these linked stories prove achingly melancholy... It is like a symphony... There is, in each story, a particular chord or strain; but taken together, these chords rise and reverberate, evoking an unease so strong it's almost a taste in the mouth... Scenes From Village Life is a brief collection, but its brevity is a testament to its force. You will not soon forget it

Claire Messud, New York Times

Impressive and very affecting

Karl Miller, Times Literary Supplement

A powerfully bleak portrait of loneliness, confusion and cracked bonds

The Times

These stories, in their humanity, may do more for Israel than any of the decisions we have been led to expect of its leaders in the months to come

New Statesman

These stories have both force and mystery, and they cast a quiet spell

Scotland on Sunday

The stories resemble an echo chamber of recurring themes, steeped in a strangeness and danger that lingers on like a dream'

Metro

I enjoyed Amos Oz's Scenes From Village Life a great deal... it explores what is universal, what is entirely idiosyncratic, about daily life in Israel away from the obvious conflicts

Kate Kellaway, Observer

Potent and uncanny

Tom Sutcliffe, Independent