What Was Lost to Time
What Was Lost to Time is a biographical novel about two friends, Nurith Gertz and Amos Oz, who talk about what the passing of time has taken away from them: life itself, family, love, places, loyalty, even betrayal. And there is discussion about art and death and about the possible connections between everything.
The conversation between the two carries on for decades: through times of war and of peace; at family gatherings at Kibbutz Hulda; at working meetings; in letters that cross oceans; and in the many phone conversations that were held when Oz was on his deathbed. With the output of these discussions, Oz left an intriguing literary legacy in Nurith Gertz’s hands. This book is the execution of that legacy. It is written in the traditional biographical-documentary style, for which Gertz created a personal and original formula in her books Not From Here (1997); Unrepentant (2008), and An Ocean Between Us (2015), books that earned critical acclaim from reviewers, as well as from tens of thousands of devoted readers.
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“Beauty is the key word when it comes to this work. The beauty of the prose, of the ideas exchanged between Amos Oz and Nurith Gertz, of their friendship… Their discourse is unique and remarkable… Gertz quotes some rare utterings of Oz’s, ones that only someone who has sung with him in the same chorus of souls and intellects would be able to extract from him.”
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“Tête-à-têtes about books, dreams and wars, on life, on sickness and on death… A wonderful book, flowing, moving.”
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“Through her superb prose Nurith Gertz illuminates the genre of biography in a new and complex light.”