The woman in the window might be a Palestinian woman in Nablus. She might be a Jewish Israeli woman in Tel Aviv. If you want to help make peace between these two women in the two windows, you had better read more about them.

Read novels, dear friends.

They will tell you much.

It is even time for each of these women to read about each other. To learn, at last, what makes the other woman in the window frightened, angry or hopeful.

I am not suggesting that reading novels can change the world. I do suggest, and I do believe, that reading novels is one of the best possible ways to understand that all the women, in all the windows, are, at the end of the day, in urgent need of peace.

Amos Oz is an Israeli novelist. This is adapted from his acceptance speech in Spain last week for the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature