Amos Oz is an Israeli writer, novelist, journalist and intellectual. He is also a professor of literature at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba, he is regarded as Israel’s most famous living author. Amos Klausner (later Oz) was born in 1939 in Jerusalem. Oz did his Israel Defense Forces service in the Nahal brigade, participating in border skirmishes with Syria. After concluding his army service, he went to Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where he studied philosophy and Hebrew literature. He graduated in 1963 and began work as a teacher of literature and philosophy. He subsequently served with a tank unit in the Sinai Peninsula during the Six-Day War and in the Golan Heights during the Yom Kippur War.
A Tale of Love and Darkness is an autobiographical novel by Israeli author Amos Oz, first published in Hebrew in 2002. The book documents much of Oz’s early life, including a number of events he previously hadn’t communicated. Oz chronicles his childhood in Jerusalem at the end of the British Mandate for Palestine and the early years of the State of Israel, and his teenage years on Kibbutz Hulda.
His parents, mother Fania Mussman and father Ariyeh Klausner, feature as prominent characters within the book. Importantly, his mother’s 1952 overdose on sleeping pills becomes the point of exploration for the novel, launching the deep probing into other parts of his childhood and youth.
Told in a non-linear fashion, Oz’s story is interwoven with tales of his family’s Eastern European roots. The family’s name was Klausner. By changing the name to a Hebrew one, Oz rebelled against that European background while affirming loyalty to the land of his birth.
A production company owned by Natalie Portman acquired the film rights to the book. Portman began shooting the movie in February 2014 in Jerusalem. The film marks her directorial feature film debut; she also played the role of Oz’s mother, and Amir Tessler played the young Oz.
Who here doesn’t know Natalie Portman? The Israeli actress who made it big in Hollywood before it was cool? Portman was born on June 9, 1981, in Jerusalem. Her original given name was Neta-Lee, a Hebrew name. She is the only child of Shelley (née Stevens), an American homemaker who works as Portman’s agent, and Avner Hershlag, an Israeli fertility specialist and gynaecologist. Portman moved to the United States when she was three years old.
In an Interview she did with Vogue in 2016, we learn some things about her that we didn’t know, such as that Natalie Portman was discovered at the age of 9 when a scout for Revlon approached her in a pizza parlour and asked her if she would be interested in modelling. “No, but I would like an agent,” was Portman’s response. “I kept my cool,” Portman later recalled. “I told him that I wanted to act.” Portman initially turned down the role of Ann August in Anywhere but Here (1999) because it included a love scene with actor Corbin Allred that required nudity. But Susan Sarandon, who had co-star approval, refused to do the film opposite anyone other than Portman.
Here is the trailer of the movie for those of you who haven’t seen it.
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