• A Tale of Love and Darkness

  • By: Amos Oz
  • Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
  • Length: 23 hrs and 52 mins
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars (331 ratings)

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A Tale of Love and Darkness  By  cover art

A Tale of Love and Darkness

By: Amos Oz
Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
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Publisher's summary

Tragic, comic, and utterly honest, this extraordinary memoir is at once a great family saga and a magical self-portrait of a writer who witnessed the birth of a nation and lived through its turbulent history.

It is the story of a boy growing up in the war-torn Jerusalem of the 40s and 50s in a small apartment crowded with books in 12 languages and relatives speaking nearly as many. His mother and father, both wonderful people, were ill-suited to each other. When Oz was 12 and a half years old, his mother committed suicide - a tragedy that was to change his life. He leaves the constraints of the family and the community of dreamers, scholars, and failed businessmen to join a kibbutz, changes his name, marries, has children, and finally becomes a writer as well as an active participant in the political life of Israel. A story of clashing cultures and lives, of suffering and perseverance, of love and darkness.

©2016 Amos Oz (P)2016 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

What listeners say about A Tale of Love and Darkness

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His life was interesting, but not his memoir

He seems for forget what he's already told you, For example I got maybe a 3rd of the way in and he'd described his father's rejection of spirituality about 10 times in almost the same words. There is a great interview with one of his aunts about life in Eastern Europe and I kept hoping for more like that, but gave up. He tells you that his father constantly makes bad jokes and then he feels the need to share them with you. There's too much detail! We don't need to know about every item on his grandfather's desk. Once he describes a very ordinary kid lying on the driveway woolgathering in a way every kid on earth has watching the sun set in his neighborhood. He ends up describing in painful detail the exact colors as they change in the sunset. It is absolutely the most tedious passage I've ever read. I heard an interview with Oz and had great hopes, but they were dashed.

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9 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars

Engrossing

I think this book could have done with a bit of editing (parts tend to drag), but overall it is an engrossing account of the author's childhood in Israel just before statehood to the early 60s, with references to his later adult life. The death of his mother during his early adolescence is central to the narrative both in form and meaning. I can't imagine a more sensitive narrator than Stefan Rudnicki.

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6 people found this helpful

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Heartbreaking, masterful

Much praise has been lavished on this memoir and all of it deserved. Let’s also salute the exquisite work of the translator -the English prose is gorgeous, elegant, pitch-perfect.

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5 people found this helpful

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Extraordinary descriptions of a family story.

Deeply moving insights into Jerusalem at a remarkable period of time in Israeli history intertwined with a tragic and uplifting saga of a family .

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3 people found this helpful

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A masterpiece

A beautiful story told in the most lovely way. I takes you to the profound psyche of a boy as he grows up. The story and history of Jewish people narrated with passion and magnificent details.

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2 people found this helpful

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About darkness and love - our lives.

If you never read another book, read this.It is about the essence of our existence.

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When dark very dark

I found the sections that described the economic state and culture of the immigrants who came to Palestine in the 1930s very interesting. I have been reading narratives about early Israel but knew nothing about these Ashkenazi Jews, who were learned, political, and terribly poor. The dark events come across the narrative as sudden stabs, which purposefully or not Oz repeats at least once later in the story, by which time I knew to shut my ears until the sentences passed. The love in the story is buried if even apparent. Of various grades of darkness there is plenty. It would have been preferable to look up Oz’s biography online after I heard the book. I kept wondering if the dark events affected the author’s treatment of his younger daughter. His mother I find the least interesting part of the book because her motivations seem to me opaque. In contrast his father is well drawn, both in terms of his place in society and his brilliant yet quirky, obsessive mind.

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Heartbreaking

I don’t know any other book that portrays so many different aspects of a human life in such depth and with such controlled equanimity. The countless carefully observed and precisely elaborated details make this a fascinating historical and autobiographical account of the life of a boy growing up in Palestine and Israel from his birth in 1939 to the 1960s, of his parents, and of his many relatives and ancestors and their lives in Israel, Russia, Poland, and elsewhere. But what makes this book truly distinctive is the author's extraordinary ability to put all of that massive amount of information into the service of giving expression to a passion for life in spite of death that all human beings can understand.

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An excellent literary work by Mr. Oz

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this book. His use of language, literary devices, and a love of words made me purchase a hard copy so that I could follow along. The reader’s voice complemented my visualization. I am looking forward to my next book by Amos Oz.

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  • RL
  • 03-26-19

so beautiful!

this book is so beautiful. it is painful to read it knowing how awful today's book are.

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