The first thing you should know about his autobiography, said Amos Oz, is that it's not an autobiography.

"It's an imposition, forced on me by the Library of Congress," the prolific Israeli author quipped to a packed house Saturday night, May 20, at Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco.

Though he also writes political and literary essays for several Israeli newspapers, Oz is best known for books like "My Michael" and "The Same Sea." His latest book, "How to Cure a Fanatic," is a collection of essays on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Oz's talk on his recent book, the at least partly autobiographical "A Tale of Love and Darkness," was the second annual Pritzker Family Lecture, sponsored by Lisa and John Pritzker and the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco.

In introducing the author, U.C. Berkeley professor and Bible scholar Robert Alter called Oz "one of Israel's most original and compelling writers of prose."

"Love and Darkness," which was published in English in 2004, is the story of Oz's childhood in 1940s Jerusalem. He was the only child of Eastern European refugees — intellectuals who, Oz said, never got over the fact that Europe didn't want them.

The book meanders its way through the streets of British-occupied Jerusalem and the homes, lives and loves of its residents, as well as Oz's family history — a subject that was taboo in his house growing up.

His parents' marriage — "an ordinary marriage," as Oz put it — was unhappy, eventually ending with his mother's suicide when Oz was 12.

The book, he said, was a way to come to grips with the tragedy. "In the course of writing this enigma, I lost interest in the

question of who was to blame," Oz said.

Instead, he became a detective, asking one question: How did this happen?

Despite the melancholy undertones of "Love and Darkness," Oz's talk was peppered with humorous anecdotes from his early life.

He described how his grandmother was so afraid of the germs in Jerusalem that she "boiled everything,"from vegetables to dishes. She even poured boiling water into her bath when she washed — three times a day, summer and winter.

His father, he said, was a bibliophile: When the family had nothing to eat, he would set out to sell some of his books at the used bookstore, but would often come home with new books that he had seen and couldn't pass up.

Despite their love for Israel, his parents' lives were filled with longing for Europe. When they spoke of a city, "they meant a city with a river in the middle and bridges across the river," Oz said.

Like many Jewish immigrants at the time, they spoke multiple languages but insisted that their son speak only Hebrew. Unsurprisingly, Oz's first English words were "British go home."

Oz, whose political leanings are notoriously leftist, said that the question of whether the state of Israel was worth it, after all the bloodshed and suffering, is a "stupid question. As if they had a choice. As if they had anywhere else to go.

"It was a life-and-death difference for a half-million Jews who came to Israel because no one else wanted them."

An outspoken proponent of a two-state solution, Oz stated his belief that Israelis and Palestinians are both victims of European subjugation.

"They see in each other the face of the oppressor," he said, adding that the struggle is a "conflict between wrong and wrong."

Oz read a short segment from his book in Hebrew, then in English translation.

Growing up, he wrote, his family had a rule about never buying anything imported that they could get from a local source. This raised the question of whether they could buy Arab cheese from a nearby dairy, which was slightly cheaper than the cheese made by Jewish pioneers.

While the argument went back and forth several times, in the end, Oz said, it didn't matter. "Either way, shame and disgrace!"

Writing the book, he admitted, was like inviting his dead relatives to visit and tell their stories, the stories he never heard as a child.

"I wrote it in order to invite the dead back home."