Don't Call It Night
Tags
Summary
Editor's review
Who it's for
A good fit for
- Readers interested in exploring the nature of marriage and intimate emotion
- Literary lovers who appreciate delicate psychological portrayal and the art of leaving things unsaid
- Readers hoping to understand modern Israeli literature and social psychology
- Readers in midlife reflecting on the meaning of existence
Not a good fit for
- Novel readers seeking strong plot and fast-paced narrative
- Readers wholly unfamiliar with Israeli cultural context and unwilling to understand it in context
Reading tips
- Recommended to read in a relatively quiet environment, carefully savoring the abundant subtext and emotional undercurrents
- Can be read alongside Oz's autobiographical novel A Tale of Love and Darkness to better understand his creative trajectory and Israeli cultural context
- When reading, pay attention to the symbolic meaning of core images such as 'surveying,' 'map,' and 'desert'
About the publisher
People's Literature Publishing House publishes across classical literature, foreign literature, documentary writing and folk literature, with 492 titles in its catalogue. Representative books range from the Chinese classic Romance of the Three Kingdoms to Lao She's Teahouse and Longxu Ditch in the Selected Works of Lao She, as well as translated foreign literature such as Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, Dante's Divine Comedy and Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels, alongside documentary and fictional works including Primo Levi's If This Is a Man and João Guimarães Rosa's The Devil to Pay in the Backlands. Its authors include Chinese writers such as Lao She, translators such as Shen Emeri and Li Wenjun, and foreign authors such as James Wood. Overall, the house has a strong record in editing classic works and translating foreign literature, with a publishing character that bridges Chinese and foreign writing and values textual quality.
Contents
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FAQ
What makes this book unique compared with Oz's other works?
What special meaning does the desert-town setting carry?
Is this novel suitable as an introduction to Amos Oz?
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About the author
Amos Oz (1939–2018) was an Israeli Hebrew-language novelist, short-story writer and essayist. Born in Jerusalem as Amos Klausner, he studied at the Hebrew University and the University of Oxford, and long lived in Kibbutz Hulda. His major works include My Michael, Black Box and A Tale of Love and Darkness. His writing examines Israeli society and the fate of the Jewish people in depth, and he received prizes including the Prix Femina and the Goethe Culture Award. He died of cancer on 28 December 2018. The library holds six of his works, including How the Apple Was Grown, Touch the Water, Touch the Wind, Where the Jackals Howl, Don't Call It Night, Elsewhere, Perhaps and A Hill of Evil Counsel, mostly classified as foreign literature.
Zhuang Yan is an author about whom little public information is available. To date, only one work is known under this name, Mo Cheng zhi wei Yewan (Do Not Call It Night), which is classified under foreign literature. Because reliable information on the author's nationality, dates of birth and death, education, and writing career is lacking, no further account of Zhuang Yan's life can be given. Judging from the existing entry, this work is the main basis for understanding Zhuang Yan's writing; its subject matter and style show features of translated foreign literature or cross-cultural writing, and the title itself carries a restrained, somewhat distant literary quality. For readers interested in foreign literature, the name Zhuang Yan is currently associated mainly with this single work. The available records include only this one title, which is not enough to outline a fuller creative trajectory or to determine whether the author has written in other genres or fields. This introduction therefore states only the facts at hand and makes no speculative additions; as more material emerges, the understanding of Zhuang Yan may be further enriched.
