Where the Jackals Howl: And Other Stories

Here is a stunning collection of short fiction from Amos Oz. Like much contemporary Israeli fiction, it is infused with a sense of impending doom. Most of the stories take place in a world familiar to Oz in the early 1960s, the kibbutz. But there are surprises here too. The story A Strange Fire, a masterpiece of short fiction, is set in a middle class Israeli home, among the rising consumer class; Upon this Evil Earth, the last story in the collection, and the longest and least successful, is a type of midrash on the story of Jephthah. This story shows the appeal and distraction of Hebrew fiction: the pull of Biblical Hebrew, both enriching and entrapping. The story itself carries with it that sense of enclosure, as Jephthah is led to his terrible fate without recourse. In this collection of stories all of Oz's characters inhabit a world of exaggerated gesture and doomed outcome.