As the Germans advance into Poland in 1939, Elisha Pomeranz, a Jewish mathematician and watchmaker, escapes into the wintry forest, leaving behind his beautiful, intelligent wife, Stefa. After the war, having evaded the concentration camps, they begin to build new lives - Stefa in Stalin's Russia and Elisha in Israel, where, as they seek their reunion, another war is brewing.
Author
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.
