Hello everyone! Here is the review of book “Scenes from village life”.

Tel llan is a rather peculiar village located in Israel, and home to all the people this collection of interconnected short stories centres around. We learn of these characters as they deal with the mundane monotony of their daily lives, stringed together not only by their common place of residence, but also the inexplicably strange experiences they live through without ever gossiping about it.

For instance, people appearing or disappearing out of nowhere, and people hearing digging sounds from their undergrounds every night. Amos Oz gives each character something to mourn about, something they know that nobody else does, something to be kept hidden without knowing exactly what or why. This must sound too vague but I think that could be Oz's deliberate intention also, as with every story he creates a sense of suspicious mystery, never promising to deliver any kind of closure to reason it all.

So at the end of every story, you're left wondering what happened to or with A / B - and more importantly WHY but then suddenly you're pushed into an altogether different scene with a different character, giving rise to newer questions with no hints to their answers. Until, of course, they somehow meet each other but your doubts still remain uncleared.

And that is how, I presume, Amos understands the perils of the human condition, like love, loss, death and longing, all weaved together into eight gripping short stories. All always startling, but also speechless about their respective oddities. The writing, despite being a translation from the Hebrew, is absolutely remarkable. It comes across as conceived and executed with the slightest precision, echoing volumes of emotions even in its slice of life brevity.

Although this book is entirely set in a fictional Israeli village, its very heart lies in a place that everybody will find easy to acess and identify with, perhaps which is why I loved reading it thoroughly. Totally recommended!

// I had bought my copy of this book blindly on sale from some random Delhi Book Fair stall in first year of college ( 2017 ). Got around reading it only now and THANK GOD I've never been prouder of my hasty past decisions. I highly recommend this book to read. It's just fabulous!

If anyone of you have already read this book, do let me know your views in the comments below.