SOURCE: Yudkin, Leon I. “The Jackal and the Other Place—The Stories of Amos Oz.” Journal of Semitic Studies 23, no. 2 (autumn 1978): 330-42.

In the following essay, Yudkin provides an overview of Oz's short fiction, focusing on his characteristic concerns, stylistic techniques, and recurring imagery.

I

Since the mid-sixties, Amos Oz (b. 1939) has been in the forefront of Israeli fiction, both in popular regard and in critical attention. He has produced a succession of stories, novellas and novels¹ that have struck chords deep in the Israeli readership and, through the medium of translation, abroad, where he has won perhaps more notice than any other Israeli novelist. Each work is striking in incident, character, plot and viewpoint, though, as we shall see, there have been changes of course over the years of the œuvre. Psychological insight has been combined with dramatic tension and narrative sophistication to create a disconcerting resonance...