A wonderful short novel from the increasingly acclaimed Israeli
author. This time, Oz (Don't Call It Night, 1996, etc.) offers the
first-person narrative of an imaginative and intelligent
12-year-old boy nicknamed Proffy (short for "Professor"), living
just outside Jerusalem in 1947, the final year of the British
"mandate" (occupation). Determined to grow up to fight for his
people's independence, Proffy joins two comrades in forming a
make-believe underground resistance movement he calls FOD ("Freedom
or Death"). He imagines himself a "panther in the basement,"
silently crouching and biding his time awaiting an opportunity to
"pounce on" the hated British. But while out one night beyond
curfew, Proffy is apprehended by the unprepossessing Sergeant
Dunlop, a clumsy British policeman who turns out to be sympathetic
toward Jews and deeply enamored of their culture. He and Proffy
meet secretly in a local cafe, exchanging Hebrew and English
lessons, and bringing Proffy to a paradoxical reevaluation of
himself as "a young Hebrew Underground fighter, whose life is
devoted to driving out the foreign oppressor, but whose soul is
bound up with his. . . . "This amazingly compact novel features
several vivid supporting characters (including Proffy's severe
scholarly father and forthright mother, his judgmental friends Ben
Hut and Chita, and Ben Hut's grownup sister Yardena, a woman wise
beyond her years) and such marvelous set-pieces as Proffy's long
rhapsodic description of the books in his father's study, and a
moving climactic moment of understanding between father and son on
the eve of the formation of the state of Israel. Oz expertly blends
together an ingenious allegory of the Israeli resistance movement,
a shimmering portrait of life in postwar Jerusalem and environs,
and an unforgettable characterization of its sentient young hero -
who's thoroughly believable both as a confused preadolescent and as
the mature writer looking backward on his, and his country's, youth
from the vantage point of middle age. Another triumph, and further
evidence of Oz's increasing claim to serious Nobel Prize
consideration. (Kirkus Reviews)
Set in the summer of 1947, this is a funny, touching, semi-autobiographical rites-of-passage novel about a lonely boy (nicknamed Profi, short for professor, because he is a bookish, serious kid) growing up in Jerusalem in the last years of British rule. From underground resistance, he is drawn into friendship with the enemy - a British soldier - to whom he gives Hebrew lessons in return for English instruction.
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