More in ‘Amos Oz’

• A Jewish papal knight has become a loud voice within the Catholic Church opposing Holocaust-era pontiff Pius XII’s sainthood. [NYT]
• A small group of ultra-Orthodox rabbis declared lox to be unkosher due to a certain parasite that salmon can host. Most rabbis disagree, though, so stick that on your bagel and eat it. [Grub ...

If Philip Roth’s The Humbling fails to earn him a National Book Award nomination next year, he can at least console himself with the news that he’s made the shortlist of contenders for a British award honoring bad sex in fiction. Bestowed by the London magazine Literary Review, the awards “draw attention to the crude, ...

• The UN Human Rights Council has endorsed the Goldstone Report, and is passing it on to the General Assembly; there are a few steps left before Israel and Hamas, if they don’t agree to conduct internal investigations into the Gaza War, could be referred to the International Criminal Court. [Haaretz]
• Editors of a satirical ...

So it turns out the Nobel Prize for Literature has gone not to the Israeli novelist Amos Oz, as some people were predicting, or to Philip Roth, who others (though fewer others, it seemed) thought was a leading contender. Instead, the winner of this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature is Herta Mueller, a Romanian-born German ...

• A supermarket chain in Israel is committed to “maximizing the shopping experience”—not with low prices or expanded merchandise, but with in-store synagogues. [Ynet]
• Why aren’t Jewish Democrats grabbing the kind of city-wide political offices in New York that they once held? Shrinking demographic? Low turnout? Switching parties? Or maybe Jewish interests dovetail enough with ...

Ladbrokes, the famous British oddmakers, is favoring Amos Oz four-to-one for this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature. He’d be the second Israeli to win the prestigious award, after the first was S.Y. Agnon in 1966. Oz, the author of several acclaimed works including the 2004 memoir A Tale of Love and Darkness, is joined on ...

• A Swedish newspaper accused Israeli soldiers of killing Palestinians in order to harvest their organs; condemnation of this “blood libel” was swift to come from a rival paper and the Israeli Foreign Ministry. [Haaretz]
• In a somewhat brighter story about organs and Israel, an American teenager visiting the country was struck by Wilson’s Disease, ...

• Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will keep the West Bank fence up no matter what, as it is “a critical component of Israel’s security,” he says. [Haaretz]
• Israeli minister Dan Meridor says he is troubled by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s pledge that America will defend Israel under its “nuclear umbrella” should Iran develop ...

“Why do you write? Why do you write the way you do? Are you trying to influence your readers, and, if so, how? What role do your books play? Do you constantly cross out and correct or do you write straight out of your head?” This is just the beginning of the long barrage of ...

Norwegian novelist and journalist Runo Isaksen first encountered Palestinian literature in 2000, when he reviewed a book by Izzat Ghazzawi—about Ghazzawi’s experiences in an Israeli prison—for the left-wing daily newspaper Klassekampen. The two authors became friends, and when Ghazzawi introduced Isaksen to the work of David Grossman, it sparked Isaksen’s intense interest in Israeli writing.
Isaksen ...