Beirut, March 06: An Arabic translation of the Israeli novelist Amos Oz’s memoir will soon be released in Lebanon, the author said on Thursday.
“My autobiography, ‘A Tale of Love and Darkness,’ will soon be published in Beirut, and I’m very moved,” the 70-year-old author told army radio.
Since it was first published in Hebrew in 2003, the novel has been translated into 15 languages and gone on sale in 27 countries, with more than one million copies sold worldwide.
“The Arab world should read this work, which can help forge links between people,” said Oz, a founder of Israel’s Peace Now movement which advocates the withdrawal from Arab territories occupied in the 1967 Middle East war.
The autobiographical tale won major acclaim for its portrayal of a Jewish family in Jerusalem living through the tumultuous decades leading up to the creation of Israel in 1948 and its aftermath.
“The book recounts the birth of Israel in circumstances that are not heroic. The country appears as a (Jewish) refugee camp,” Oz said.
The translation was financed by Elias Khoury, a well-known Christian Palestinian lawyer in Palestinian East Jerusalem whose son George was shot dead in 2004 by Palestinian resistance who mistook him for a radical Jewish settler.
“The book shows how the Jewish people came to independence after all they experienced, and it should be an example for the Palestinian people,” Khoury told the radio station.
Two novels by Oz have previously been translated into Arabic, “My Michael,” published in Egypt in 1994 and “Soumchi” in Jordan in 1997
—Agencies