To avoid a history lesson on the tensions and violence between Israel and Palestine—because, let’s face it, that’s not why you’re here—history buffs can absorb knowledge from an intellectual whose life has spanned seven decades of the cultural/religious/nationalist struggles. 

Amos Oz, author of A Tale of Love and Darkness, My Michael, Where the Jackals Howl and a host of other works, will speak at Kleinhans Music Hall as part of Just Buffalo Literary Center‘s Babel Series.  Tickets are $35 apiece for the 8 p.m. show on Thursday, but if you want the VIP treatment—which includes a seat in the reserved section and admittance to the pre-event author reception—you’ll have to drop $100. 

Oz, currently a professor of literature at Ben-Gurion University in Be’er Sheva (Israel), is fascinating mostly because he’s lived through a tumultuous period for Jews in Israel—from World War II to the celebration of Israel as a state to the ensuing decades of Arab-Israeli conflict.  He’s first and foremost a liberal Zionist who emphasizes peaceful resolution—a rare breed in the Middle East.  For more information on his worldview and ideas for solving the Israel vs. Palestine saga, read his op-ed to the New York Times in 2010.

Augmenting his life narrative is Oz’s time in a kibbutz, an isolated socialist community based on agriculture.  I’d be up for living in one of those, but only for a year.  So confining, but everyone’s so friendly!  According to the Taipei Times, Oz’s former kibbutz (he stayed until the mid-1980s) Hulda has fallen on hard times, eventually falling to the inherent freedoms of capitalism.

Filled to the brim with fascinating stories and worthy insight, Oz is an international literary icon.