Reading foreign novels help us understand foreign writers, says Israeli novelist Amos Oz upon winning the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature. This appears to come naturally from this upbringing. In his memoir, he says, “Books filled our home. My father could read sixteen or seventeen languages and could speak eleven (all with a Russian accent). My mother spoke four or five languages and read seven or eight… Out of cultural considerations they mostly read books in German or English, and presumably they dreamed in Yiddish. But the only language they taught me was Hebrew.”