Amos Oz - Judas (Chatto & Windus, 2016) **

Shmuel Ash is a jewish student in the Jerusalem of 1959, and although he was writing a university text on early christianity and the role of Judas, he drops out and becomes the assistant of an old man, to keep him company when the old man requires. Shmuel falls in love with the old man's 40-year old lively yet mysterious daughter-in-law, Atalia Abravanel. Her deceased father used to be one of Israel's traitors, a man who advocated for one single state under international control where jews and arabs could live together. As a vocal anti-zionist his named and reputation had been smeared. Like Judas, he was the traitor of his own heritage and culture.

The concept of the novel sounds good. Different layers are at work, past and present, myth and reality, personal lives and historic facts, with often differences in perspectives, including during the long discussions between Shmuel and the old man. The shifting perspectives on the concept of traitor of course also surface. Was Judas a traitor, or was he the one without whom the crucifixion and resurrection could not have taken place?

So far so good, but all this does not make the novel really a strong literary achievement. The characters are dull, with the exception of Atalia, the story is without inherent tension, and stylistically it is not very special. What remains is a novel of ideas. Strangely enough, the deep sense of anger caused by betrayal, the confusion it creates, the uncertainty about whether or not to go against the own group, the cowardice or courage are all very strong and deep emotions that deserved a better story than the one offered. But maybe that's just another layer. That the distant reporting by the uninteresting characters is in itself a betrayal of the deep personal human crisis that betrayal constitutes.

Amos Oz - Scenes From Village Life (Vintage, 2012) ****

Amos Oz is één van Israels betere schrijvers, en deze bundel kortverhalen doet zijn reputatie alle eer aan. Zoals de titel het zegt, vindt elk verhaal plaats in Tel Illan, een waarschijnlijk fictief dorp, en raken de levens van de opeenvolgende hoofdpersonages elkaar zijdelings.

Oz schrijft met een verrassende eenvoud over de soms diepe angsten en verlangens van de inwoners van dit dorpje, die aan de oppervlakte een redelijk normaal leven leiden, zoals dorpsarts, lerares, immobiliënhandelaar. Enkel de ouderen spreken expliciete taal, alle anderen bewegen zich als evenwichtskunstenaars tussen heden en verleden, tussen raciale en religieuze en politieke meningsverschillen, en diep onder al deze kwetsbare relaties is een duistere diepte die niemand durft te benoemen.

"Singing", het voorlaatste verhaal eindigt met de zin "I had no further reason to turn my back to despair. So I got down on my hands and knees at the foot of the double bed and, rolling back the bedspread, I tried to grope with the pale beam of my torch into the dark space underneath".

of in "Lost" : "Once when I was eight or nine my father shut me up in the toolshed in the garden for an hour or two because I broke a thermometer. I can still remember the fingers of cold and darkness groping at me as I huddled like a foetus in a corner of the shed. The curved passageway had three closed doors apart from the one we had come through. Indicating one of them, Yardena said that it led down into the cellar and asked me if I wanted to go down and see it. 
'You're not afraid of cellars, are you?'
'No, I'm not, but if you don't mind, maybe we'll skip the cellar this time'.

of in "Digging", wordt een oude man elke nacht wakker van een vreemd geluid onder de vloer. "In the night, at two or two-thirty, woken again by tapping, scraping and digging sounds, the old man got out of bed (he always slept in his long johns), and felt for the torch he had put out specially and the iron bar he had found in one of the sheds, his feet groping in the dark like blind beggars for his slippers".

Ongeacht het verhaal, is er iets fouts, in hun persoonlijke geschiedenissen, met hun geweten, met hun oplossingen.

Subtiel en meesterlijk verteld.