Read Amos Oz as if meeting him for the first time - Don't call it night (Chatto & Windus, 2004 - Al tagidi laila) only $12,- hardback copy from Quilters' on Lambton Quay - not a second-hand book shop, an Antiquarian bookshop. Heaps of poetry books.
Back to Amos Oz: here's a question - the novel ended too soon for me, so read what was on the next page, curiously, a list of the novel's characters, like in a play, including near the end "Hungarian Cantor".
I can't remember a cantor of any kind in this book- did Oz just pop him in the list to keep things interesting?
Needing to read more Oz, took The Same Sea (Vintage, 2001, Oto HaYam) from my shelf: what I thought of as my copy turns out to belong to a friend.(I feel guilty, but I'll read it again first.)
The format of The Same Sea is different from usual novels: chapters often only a page long or less, prose poems, non-prose poems, lots of work for the reader, satisfying though at times obscure, not to say impossible to understand. ( I'd wish I had a Hebrew version, to read them side by side). The excellent translation by Nicholas de Lange, as usual.
Perceived recurring themes: the impossibility of truly knowing anyone else however close, the great suffering caused by love, and as part of the canvas he paints on, ordinary people grieving losses incurred in the Conflict.
In Don't call it night, he writes a wonderful sentence - about people's obsession with the past and the future, how they shouldn't. I'll re-read that book, find the sentence for posting here, and check about the cantor.
