 |
 |
INTERVIEWER
Often the most solidly rooted works of art are the most universal. The great Russians are an example: Dostoyevsky, Gogol, Chekhov couldn’t be anything but Russian, yet we all recognize ourselves in their characters and predicaments. But in your novels, one gets the impression that the real protagonist is Israel—the land, the people, the history. One favorite in the West is My Michael, which is the story of the relationship between Hannah, an Israeli woman, and two Arab men in the aftermath of the Suez crisis. It is read as an expression of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Do you consciously set out to incarnate an idea?
OZ
You know, if you write in a troubled part of the world, everything is interpreted allegorically. If I wrote a story about a mother, a father, and their daughter, a critic would say that the father represents the government, the mother, the old values, and the daughter the shattered economy! If Moby-Dick was written in South America today under the name of Vargas Llosa, people would say it is about dictatorship. If it were written in South Africa by Nadine Gordimer, it would be interpreted as the conflict between the blacks and the whites. In Russia the whale would be Stalin, in the Middle East the novel would be about Israelis chasing Palestinians or vice versa. So that is the price you pay for writing in a trouble spot.
|
|
|
|
|
|
