The Story Begins

Essays on Literature

By Amos Oz

1996

First Published

3.75

Average Rating

144

Number of Pages

4H24M

Audio Length

In this collection of ten essays, Amos Oz shares his rich and rewarding experience as both writer and teacher. As he analyzes the opening sections of novels and short stories by such writers as Agnon, Gogol, Kafka, Chekhov, García Márquez, and Raymond Carver, Oz instructs, challenges, and guides. He writes about the notion of "beginnings," what the beginning of a novel or short story might "mean" to the author and how important it is. And best of all-he entertains. He highlights opening paragraphs in which authors make promises they may or may not deliver later in the work, or deliver in unexpected ways, or they may deliver more than they have promised. It is a game that miraculously and playfully engages both writer and reader. The Story Begins is a resourceful, accessible, and friendly companion for all students of literature and writing and for all book lovers.

Avg Rating

3.75

Number of Ratings

195

5 STARS

25%

4 STARS

33%

3 STARS

35%

2 STARS

1 STARS

goodreads

Author

Amos Oz

Author · 34 books

Amos Oz (Hebrew: עמוס עוז‎; born Amos Klausner) was an Israeli writer, novelist, journalist and intellectual. He was also a professor of literature at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba. He was regarded as Israel's most famous living author. Oz's work has been published in 42 languages in 43 countries, and has received many honours and awards, among them the Legion of Honour of France, the Goethe Prize, the Prince of Asturias Award in Literature, the Heinrich Heine Prize and the Israel Prize. In 2007, a selection from the Chinese translation of A Tale of Love and Darkness was the first work of modern Hebrew literature to appear in an official Chinese textbook. Since 1967, Oz had been a prominent advocate of a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.