He has that mixture of lyrical intensity, utter seriousness and capacity for describing life in a few words which characterises some of the best Russian classical authors

There is no novelist writing today who catches the feeling of the moment more surely than Amos Oz

Amos Oz is one of the finest novelists of this entire period.MY MICHAEL is a beautiful work of great depth and in some indescribable way lingers in the mind as a lyric song to his country's people as much as a moving love story.

Amos Oz is a great writer because he tells stories about real people in a way that no-one else can.I not only get joy from reading his work, but as a writer I learn from it, and take example by its excellence, having a great respect for his genius.Finally, these reasons are irrelevant, because there are certain writers in the world who, if you pick up one of their books by chance just as you decide to hang yourself, in despair at not getting very far with one of your own, will save you from doing so.Amos Oz, for me, is one of these.

Amos Oz is a commanding artist who ranks with the most important writers of our time.MY MICHAEL, an early work, reveals him to have been from the first everything we know him to be today: a visionary fabricator of breathtaking power and wit, as well as a crafty interpreter of difficult souls.

What stands out...is Oz's strident lyricism

So full of surprises that even to start describing it you have to give a few away...compelling

A novel of scintillating brilliance... a modern myth of good and evil... Gripping

A dissection of the emotional fissures that tear families apart

The novel...is thoughtful and beautifully written, examining lost lives, chances and choices

A sort of historical treatise follows, one that is devoid of the kind of colourful details which abound in stereotypical lottery daydreams, but which nevertheless endears the reader to Andy and his cause, and sets up an enticing conclusion'