One of Israel’s foremost writers, and often fiercest critics, talks to Peter Stanford about why Jesus and Judas appear in his latest novel, and why he connects with Jesus the Jew

“Jesus Christ is very close to my heart.” Amos Oz, widely hailed as Israel’s greatest living novelist, likes to embrace big and controversial themes. “I love his poetry. I love his wonderful sense of humour. I love his tenderness. I love his compassion. I have always regarded him as one of the greatest Jews who ever lived.” Oz is so enamoured, he explains, that he has Jesus included as one of the four “ghosts” in his latest novel, Judas.

We are in the middle of what feels like a surreal conversation. Opposite me, on the sun deck at the East London home of Oz’s long-time literary agent, Deborah Owen, is a 77-year-old man who speaks softly but talks like a prophet. He is small in physical stature but with a mighty reputation around the globe as an unflinching chronicler of the human condition.

He is regularly tipped as a Nobel Prize for Literature laureate, has won leading literary prizes in Italy, Spain and Germany and has been awarded France’s Legion d’Honneur. “Oz” is the Hebrew word for strength. The precocious 15-year-old Amos Klausner  adopted it as his surname when he joined a kibbutz.