Judas, the return of Amos Oz to the novel, a genre he had not frequented since A History of Love and Darkness, presents a bold and novel interpretation of the figure of Judas Iscariot in the context of a distressing and delicate love story.

In the winter of 1959, the world of young Shmuel Ash collapses: his girlfriend abandons him, his parents go bankrupt, and he is forced to drop out of college. In that desperate moment, he finds refuge and work in an old stone house in Jerusalem, where he will have to keep company and talk with an invalid and sarcastic old man. Upon arrival, an attractive woman named Atalia will warn Shmuel not to fall in love with her; that has been the reason for the expulsion of its predecessors. In the apparent routine that is created at home, the shy Shmuel feels a progressive agitation caused, in part, by the desire and curiosity that Atalia provokes in him. He also resumes his research on the image of Jesus for the Jews, and the mysterious and cursed figure of Judas Iscariot, the supposed incarnation of treason and meanness, is absorbing him without remedy.