Judas

Description: SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE 2017 Amos Oz's first major novel in a decade - since A Tale of Love and Darkness, which sold over 100,000 copies Selected as a Book of the Year 2016 in the Times Literary Supplement Shmuel, a young, idealistic student, is drawn to a mysterious handwritten note on a campus noticeboard. This takes him to a strange house, where an elderly invalid man requires a paid companion, to argue with and read to him. But there is someone else in the house, too... A woman, who is trailed by ghosts from her past. Shmuel is captivated by her, a sexual obsession which evolves into gentle love and devotion; and he is pulled to the old man, an intellectual obsession which also evolves into gentle love and devotion. Shmuel begins to uncover the house's tangled history and, in doing so, reaches an understanding that harks back not only to the beginning of the Jewish-Arab conflict, but also the beginning of Jerusalem itself - to Christianity, to Judaism, to Judas. Set in the still-divided Jerusalem of 1959-60, Judas is an exquisite love story and coming-of-age tale, and a radical rethinking of the concept of treason. It is a novel steeped in desire and curiosity from one of Israel's greatest living writers.

Review: "Judas is many-layered, thought-provoking and - in its love story - delicate as a chrysalis, this is an old-fashioned novel of ideas that is strikingly and compellingly modern." -- Peter Stanford * Observer * "A very absorbing addition to his remarkable oeuvre" -- Andrew Motion * Guardian * "This book is compassionate as well as painfully provocative, a contribution to some sort of deeper listening to the dissonances emerging from deep within the politics and theology of Israel and Palestine." -- Rowan Williams * New Statesman * "After almost two dozen books that track changes in both heart and state with untiring strength and subtlety, the Israeli master has delivered one of the boldest of all his works... Nicholas de Lange, Oz's distinguished translator, steers these virtuoso transitions between debate and domesticity with unerring skill... Oz can imagine, and inhabit, treachery of every stripe. But he keeps faith with the art of fiction." -- Boyd Tonkin * Financial Times * "A big, beautiful novel... Funny, wise and provoking." -- Kate Saunders * The Times *



Prizes: Long-listed for The International Man Booker Prize 2017 (UK).

Author Biography: Born in Jerusalem in 1939, Amos Oz is the internationally acclaimed author of many novels and essay collections, translated into over forty languages, including his brilliant semi-autobiographical work, A Tale of Love and Darkness. He has received several international awards, including the Prix Femina, the Israel Prize, the Goethe Prize, the Frankfurt Peace Prize and the 2013 Franz Kafka Prize. He lives in Israel and is considered a towering figure in world literature.