Don't Call It Night

by Amos Oz

Book Overview

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

"A rich symphony of humanity . . . If Oz's eye for detail is enviable, it is his magnanimity which raises him to the first rank of world authors." --Sunday Telegraph (UK)

At Tel-Kedar, a settlement in the Negev desert, the longtime love affair between Theo, a sixty-year-old civil engineer, and Noa, a young schoolteacher, is slowly disintegrating. When a pupil dies under difficult circumstances,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0156005573
• ISBN13: 9780156005579
• Release Date: October 1997
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.49 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.6" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

We're not truly desperate to do anything

Amos Oz's Don't Call It Night is an understated elegy on the Zionist Dream. The wider narrative is about the loss of collective responsibility and a sense of overall duty to a culture (in this case, the Zionist dream of a Jewish state of high moral and ethical standards.) Noa, a schoolteacher who tries to establish a drug treatment center in a desert town outside of Beersheba following the drug related death of one of her students, encounters widespread apathy and obstruction from her community, and finally from herself. In one of the telling moments of self-reflection in the novel, she explains: "Our real tragedy is that we're not desperate to do anything. That's the real disaster. When you're not burning to do anything any more, you cool down and start dying... We've got to start wanting things. To hold on with both hands so life won't run away... Otherwise it's all over." Of course this holds true for people everywhere, but in Israel even more so: For a state built upon action and creating physical facts, on molding a land to conform to a dream, cooling down can be lethal.

a connection across a sea of difficulties

Don't Call it night is set in Tel Kedar, a semi-seedy desert town in Israel that evokes the real difficulty of making life bloom where the land is sterile. The narrators are lovers whose relationship is undergoing a test. Theo is muscular, judgmental, intelligent and sexy. Noa, much younger has delayed her growing up in taking care of an elderly father. The two live together, but there is a barrier to their intimacy that they occasionally leap over. After one of Noa's students dies while on drugs the boy's father offers to finance a drug clinic in Tel Kadar. This is not the story of a crusade, instead it's the story of two people-Theo and Noa- who find a way to talk to each other in spite of profound differences in the way they see the world. Many of the review focus on the problems in their relationship, but I wonder if Oz may have been trying, very subtly to draw our attention to the way people can manage, with kindness and tact to bridge enormous gaps. Lynn Hoffman, author of bang BANG: A Novel and New Short Course in Wine,The

enchanting, melancholic, wise

Two people, so fundamentally different, who somehow find peace and understanding together. This is, in principle, what "Don't call it night" is about. Amos Oz, probably the most famous Israeli writer and propagator of peace, wrote a very wise novel. Israel is inseparable from the story, its history and geography (the overwhelming desert) are in every sentence, but the truths emerging from this book are universal. Noa and Theo, a couple with eight years together behind them, are in a bit stagnant phase of their relationship. Theo, a man in his sixties, who achieved a lot in life as a successful architect, and saw a lot, living for years in Central America, has reached a minimalist attitude. He is very introvert, drawn in, finds pleasure in observing other people and in his daily routines. Noa, a middle-aged literature teacher at the local school in a small town of Tel Kedar, who started her independent life very late, after the death of her paralyzed father who she was taking care of, is always running around, never happy with her achievements, always setting new goals. The novel starts when they have to face a difficult situation: Noa has suddenly been asked to organize a refuge for the young drug addicts as a memorial to her pupil, who died (suicide?) recently. The boy's father promised to provide the money... Noa, an energetic, even restless woman, starts the research immediately... only to discover endless obstacles. She does not want to show her weakness and ask Theo for help, until she has to. Theo, on the other hand, does not want to interfere if he is not asked... The whole problem seems to be also a trial for their relationship... But shows only their enormous affection, tenderness and love for each other. Thanks to a formal maneuver- the chapters change narrators between Noa and Theo - the reader knows more of their feelings to each other, than they do. The language of the novel is very pure, simple yet precise without baroque ornaments and erudition shows, so common nowadays. Oz uses the knowledge of history and the Bible where it is essential for the plot. "Don't call it night" is a beautiful book, worth returning to from time to time.

An interesting relationship.

Theo, a highly capable, but directionless civil engineer in his 60's, lives with Noa, a teacher in her 40's in the small dessert town of Tel Kedar. Noa is seeking more in life, and when she comes to head an effort to establish a drug rehabilitation center she sees working on this project as the answer, but at the same time this heightens her dissatisfaction with what she sees as her lover's lassitude. The story is told in their alternating voices, a device which works very well: sometimes they are talking about the same events, more often each voice moves the story along. Oz has a great appreciation for the physical environment and conveys this to the reader: the apartment the two share, its views, the desert surrounding the town. The book is somewhat limited in its plot, and in its secondary characters; also, while I was interested in the relationship between Theo and Noa, I did not find them particularly interesting people. Consequently, what is a rather short novel, almost seems too long, yet one definitely worth reading.

Redemption Comes in Small Packages

The title tells the whole story. It only seems like life is dark. Redemption can come in the smallest of packages. I was moved by the book. Redemption comes not from building roads or espousing ideologies, but from perservering in a relationship and getting up in the morning to make your salad just right. Oz's language is rich and beautiful. He artfully uses biblical and other Jewish references. It's gorgeous even in translation.