Amos Oz Standalone Novels books in order

Amos Oz's seventeen standalone novels span six decades of Israeli literary history, from his debut Elsewhere, Perhaps (1966) to Judas (2014), and include the beloved memoir-novel A Tale of Love and Darkness and the internationally acclaimed My Michael.

Reading order

# Title Published Author Buy on Amazon
1 Elsewhere, Perhaps 1966 Amos Oz Buy
2 My Michael 1968 Amos Oz Buy
3 Touch the Water, Touch the Wind 1974 Amos Oz Buy
4 Soumchi 1980 Amos Oz Buy
5 A Perfect Peace 1982 Amos Oz Buy
6 Black Box 1986 Amos Oz Buy
7 To Know a Woman 1989 Amos Oz Buy
8 Fima 1991 Amos Oz Buy
9 Under This Blazing Light 1995 Amos Oz Buy
10 Don’t Call It Night 1996 Amos Oz Buy
11 Panther in the Basement 1997 Amos Oz Buy
12 The Same Sea 2001 Amos Oz Buy
13 A Tale of Love and Darkness 2004 Amos Oz Buy
14 Rhyming Life and Death 2009 Amos Oz Buy
15 Suddenly in the Depths of the Forest 2010 Amos Oz Buy
16 Between Friends 2013 Amos Oz Buy
17 Judas 2014 Amos Oz Buy

Amos Oz’s standalone novels cover the full range of Israeli experience: the kibbutz, Jerusalem, the Six-Day War, the peace movement, biblical history, and the texture of everyday domestic life. His early novels like My Michael (1968) and Touch the Water, Touch the Wind (1974) have a lyrical intensity. Later books such as Black Box (1986), an epistolary novel about a failed marriage, and Don’t Call It Night (1996) move toward a more austere prose.

A Tale of Love and Darkness (2004) stands apart as his single most important book — part memoir, part social history of Mandate Palestine and the early state of Israel, part meditation on his mother’s depression and death. It brought him new readers worldwide who had not encountered his fiction. Judas (2014) was his final novel, a theological and political meditation set in Jerusalem in the 1950s. The full arc of the seventeen books shows a writer consistently willing to test his own assumptions about the country he both loved and argued with.


Frequently Asked Questions

How many books are in the Amos Oz Standalone Novels series?

There are seventeen books in the Amos Oz Standalone Novels series, published between 1966 and 2014.

What is the first book in the Amos Oz Standalone Novels series?

The first book in the Amos Oz Standalone Novels series is Elsewhere, Perhaps, published in 1966.

Which Amos Oz novel should a new reader start with?

A Tale of Love and Darkness (2004) is the most widely read entry point — it is a memoir that reads like a novel and covers his Jerusalem childhood, his mother’s death, and the birth of Israel. For pure fiction, My Michael (1968) is a short, powerful novel and the work most often cited as his masterpiece.

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