Scenes from Village Life

A teenage son shoots himself under his parents’ bed. They sleep that night unaware he is lying dead beneath them.

A stranger turns up at a man’s door to persude him that they must get rid of his ageing mother in order to sell the house.

An old man grumbles to his daughter about the unexplained digging and banging he hears under the house at night.

As each story unfolds, Amos Oz, builds a portrait of a village in Israel. It is a surreal and unsettling place. Each villager is searching for something, and behind each episode is another, hidden story. In this powerful, hynotic work Amos Oz peers into the darkness of our lives and gives us a glimpse of what goes on beneath the surface of everyday existence.

By the winner of the 2013 Franz Kafka Prize, previous winners of which include Philip Roth, Ivan Klima, Elfriede Jelinek, Harold Pinter and John Banville.