Have you ever sat alone on public transport and let your imagination run wild about the private lives of your fellow passengers? If so, Rhyming Life and Death will appeal to your sense of creativity and voyeurism. Amos Oz’s inventive novel probes the inner workings of writers’ minds through his central character, simply named the Author.

Wandering the streets of Tel Aviv, the Author contemplates the nature of his occupation and what it is that motivates him to ‘write about things that exist, to try to capture a colour or smell or sound in words’ which he likens to ‘playing Schubert when Schubert is sitting in the hall, and perhaps sniggering in the dark’. Through chance encounters with a waitress who serves him coffee, to a young boy eager to become a poet, the Author delves into the interior worlds of the strangers he meets and in turn uses this material to influence his own craft. Irrespective of your literary ambitions, Oz’s novel is a fascinating exploration on how personal experience inevitably weaves itself into any writer’s work.