Compare Fima

“Astonishing . . . galvanic and intoxicating.” — Fima lives in Jerusalem, but feels he ought to be somewhere else. In his life he has had secret love affairs, good ideas, and written a book of poems that aroused expectations. He has thought about the purpose of the universe and where the country lost its way. He has felt longings of all sorts, and the constant desire to pen a new chapter. And here he is now, in his early fifties in a shabby apartment on a gloomy wet morning, engaged in a humiliating struggle to release his shirt from the zipper of his fly. With wit and insight, Amos Oz portrays a man—and a generation—dreaming noble dreams but doing nothing. “One of Oz’s most memorable fictional creations . . . Fima is a cross between Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya and Joyce’s Leopold Bloom.” —