When the kibbutz was first founded, we were a big family. Of course, not everything was rosy, but we were close. In the evenings, we sang catchy melodies and nostalgic songs until late into the night. We slept in tents and could hear those who spoke in their sleep." Has the ideal of communal life withstood the erosion of time for the inhabitants of Kibbutz Yikha? Ben-Gurion is Prime Minister, and Israeli society is already not the same as it was in the time of the founders. So questions of principle and regulation arise for the kibbutzniks: can, for example, Henia Kalisch be allowed to send her son Yotam to study abroad - with his uncle who, as it happens, has left the kibbutz - and should little Yuval be left at the children's home, despite his tears? But even in a small community very attached to ideological principles, matters of the heart sometimes take over. Will Yoev Carni resist the charm of young Nina, especially when he runs into her during his nightly surveillance rounds? Can Nahum Asherov accept that his old friend David Dagan, an excellent teacher and great seducer, moves in with his daughter Edna, barely seventeen years old? And what will Ariella, who is overflowing with affection for the ex-wife of her lover Boaz, do? In Yikha as elsewhere, people struggle with their heartaches and unrealizable desires, but in a kibbutz, one is never alone... In eight tragicomic short stories that read like a novel, Amos Oz scrutinizes the passions and weaknesses of human beings, brings to light a submerged world and, above all, offers us a great melancholic book on solitude.