A Tale of Two Cities

A Tale of Love and Darkness is an epic story of personal and national tragedy, seasoned with wry humor. By turns comic and tragic, it is the tale of a child who grows up in the 1940s and 1950s amid war, suicide, and existential angst in Jerusalem. It is also a father's tender portrait of his son, a small boy at the center of a huge extended family in a crowded apartment filled with books in twelve languages. The next generation later moves to Israel's kibbutz movement, where its narrator changes his name and joins society's peaceful commune. But even love on its farm cannot save this visionary from becoming a part of his nation's turbulent political life. Throughout, Oz writes about the nature of freedom: It can mean either the radical act of changing one's entire way of life or staying in one place and never changing at all.