Amos Oz’s Two Pens: Between Literature and Politics

The Hebrew novelist and political essayist, Amoz Oz (1939-2018), arguably Israel’s leading intellectual, was fond of describing himself as using two different pens - the first used to write works of prose and fiction, and the other to criticize the government and advocate for a political change. This volume revisits the two pens parable. It brings together scholars from various disciplines who assess Amos Oz’s dual role in Israeli culture and society as an immensely popular novelist and a leading public intellectual. Next to offering an intellectual portrait, the chapters in this book highlight some of Oz’s seminal works, examine their reception, evaluate key political and literary debates he was involved in, as well as trace some of the connections between the two realms of his activity. This book is a fascinating read for students, researchers, and academics of Israeli politics, history, literature, and culture. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Israeli History and are accompanied by a new afterword by the Israeli novelist Lilah Nethanel.

Arie M. Dubnov is Associate Professor of History and the Max Ticktin Chair of Israel Studies at the George Washington University, USA. His publications include the intellectual biography Isaiah Berlin: The Journey of a Jewish Liberal (2012), and two edited volumes, Zionism - A View from the Outside (2010 [in Hebrew]) and Partitions: A Transnational History of Twentieth-century Territorial Separatism (2019, co-edited with Laura Robson).