Touch the Water, Touch the Wind

by Amos Oz

Book Overview

Oz has crafted an intricate tale of people constantly seeking escape from a hostile world, an escape symbolized on its highest level by the watchmaker Pomeranz, a mathematician and musician. By the power of his music, he causes the arid earth to turn into a moist womb that receives him and his wife not in death but in immortality. Translated by Nicholas de Lange. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0151908737
• ISBN13: 9780151908738
• Release Date: January 1974
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.83 lbs.

Customer Reviews

an eccentric look at the destruction

An eccentrically lyrical novel of the Holocaust, Oz treats the destruction of Europe's Jews in a mythical vein. The main character is drawn as a cross current between science and religion; cast as a Christ-like figure, his ability to defy the laws of nature is balanced by his rationalism. In keeping with the title, the novel has a strange kind of levitation on the level of language; a kind of realism, it skims the surface of the reality it paints, giving the reader no deep insight into the psychology of the characters. This is not a flaw in Oz's writing. Rather, it is a lesson in metaphysics and mysticism. Touch the Water Touch the Wind is a mediation of what language can and can't explain in human experience.