I've been an admirer of Amos Oz for so long that I've almost forgotten his novels. They were wonderfully written and very intelligent, but I remember thinking that there was something elusive and held back about them. Now here is his account of his first twenty years; and it may explain a lot.

Like his fiction, it's full of humour and lovely writing. You have to love a book that says of the slow walk of Jews in Jerusalem, 'Once they had lowered their foot they were in no hurry to move it: we had waited two thousand years to gain a foothold';