Amos Oz, a giant of Israeli literature and politics

In Western democracies, literature no longer matters to politics. Once, literature and politics could co-exist on the same typewriter or in the same person: George Orwell in Britain, André Malraux in France. But that was a long time ago. Still, the powers of politics remain linguistic, whether bureaucratic or rhetorical: the war criminal at his desk, the elected representative on her Twitter.

Amos Oz, the Israeli novelist who died today aged 79, was living proof of the political powers of literature. In Israel, which is a Western democracy most of the time, Oz is seen as a great writer but a failed politician. In the West, he is seen as the still-living conscience of a political failure. Nothing shows us both sides of a story so well as a novel. And nothing occludes the quality of literature like politics.

Oz was the Everyman of Israel’s founding elite. There were elements of necessary imposture in this persona, but that is what fiction needs.