Amos Oz

04/03/2010

Israel's most famous author and journalist talks politics, fairytales and Mossad hits

By Doug Johnstone

It’s tempting, while perusing Amos Oz’s latest book, to read plenty of subtext into it. Oz is Israel’s most famous living novelist and journalist, his 45-year career seeing him involved as much in the political sphere – as an outspoken liberal and left-winger – as the literary one.

His latest book, Suddenly in the Depths of the Forest, is a dark, eerie fairytale set in an unnamed village in which all the animals have disappeared and the adults refuse to talk about it. Two children go into the woods, braving stories of a demon, to find out what has happened. It’s a beautiful, dreamlike story that tackles heavy-duty subjects such as persecution, collusion, guilt and exclusion. 

Given Oz’s background, it’s tempting to read it as a commentary on both the Holocaust and the current Middle East situation, but Oz is having none of it. “It’s not an allegory of the Middle East, it’s wrong to assume every writer from the Middle East has to write about nothing but the situation,” he says. 

“It’s a universal story about exclusion and suffering, loneliness and courage. Cruelty is universal and unfortunately I live in a very cruel part of the world.” 

In fact, the book was written as a bedtime story for Oz’s grandchildren. The story was influenced by the dark fairytales Oz’s mother told him as a child, something discussed in-depth in the writer’s extraordinary memoir, A Tale of Love and Darkness. That book is currently being turned into a movie, directed by and starring Natalie Portman as Oz’s mother, but the author is keeping his distance from the whole project.

“She sent me a script and I made some comments, but that’s as involved as I want to get,” he says. “I’m not a film man, it’s a different musical instrument, it’s not my musical instrument.” 

Unlike many politically active authors, Oz has always been careful to separate his fiction from his own opinions, and thinks that’s partly the key to his success.

“I have two pens on my desk, one is to write my stories, the other is to write articles in which I tell governments to go to hell – and I never mix,” he laughs. 

“They’re different colours, these are two different lives and I don’t confuse them. I have never written a story in order to tell a government or a people where to go or what to do.” 

That doesn’t stop him having opinions in interviews, of course, although he’s as bamboozled as the rest of us by the recent alleged Mossad hit on a Hamas general in Dubai and the use of fake British passports by the agents.“It’s like something out of a spy novel,” he says. “I read about it with bewilderment.”

Oz is to be applauded for his outspoken history. Back in 1967, just after the Six-Day War, he was one of the first Israelis to advocate a two-state solution with Palestine, which got him assaulted and issued with death threats. “There were so few of us, we could have conducted our national assemblies in an elevator,” he laughs. “Today the two-state solution is accepted almost across the board. The majority of Israelis and Palestinians are ready and willing to renew negotiations but those in power are nervous. The patient is ready for the surgery but the doctors are cowards.”

While not shy about criticising his own government, he is equally critical of hardliners across the border. “Hamas is a stumbling block because they believe Israel should be liquidated,” he says.

“Even a man of compromise like myself cannot compromise with this – what, I should agree that Israel should exist only on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays? But fortunately the majority of Palestinians are not like Hamas, they are secular and pragmatic.”
 
Having advocated a peaceful solution for more than 40 years, Oz remains upbeat about the future, albeit tempered with realism. “Now you want me to be a prophet?” he jokes.  “That’s hard in the land of the prophets, there’s too much competition. But I am positive that in the end there will be two states, Israel next door to Palestine in mutual recognition and coexistence, not necessarily in love.

“But how long this will take I don’t know because I never underestimate the stupidity of politicians and determination of fanatics and zealots on both sides.”

Suddenly in the Depths of the Forest (Chatto & Windus) by Amos Oz is out now