To the End of the Land - Softcover

Amazon Best of the Month, September 2010: To the End of the Land is a book of mourning for those not dead, a mother's lament for life during a wartime that has no end in sight. At the same time, it's joyously and almost painfully alive, full to the point of rupture with the emotions and the endless quotidian details of a few deeply imagined lives. Ora, the Israeli mother in Grossman's story, is surrounded by men: Ilan and Avram, friends and lovers who form with her a love triangle whose intimacies and alliances fit no familiar shape, and their sons Adam and Ofer, one for each father, from whom Ora feels her separation like a wound. When Ofer, freshly released from his army service, volunteers for an action in the West Bank instead of going on a planned hike with his mother in the north of Israel, she goes instead with Avram, who fathered Ofer but has never met him and has lived in near-seclusion since being tortured as a prisoner in the Yom Kippur war three decades before. As they walk and carefully reveal themselves to each other again, Grossman builds an overwhelming portrait of, as one character says, the "thousands of moments and hours and days" that make "one person in the world," and of the power of war to destroy such a person, even--or especially--when they survive its cruel demands. --Tom Nissley

David Grossman was born in Jerusalem, where he still lives. He is the bestselling author of numerous works of fiction, non-fiction and children's books, which have been translated into thirty-six languages. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the French Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and the 2010 Frankfurt Peace Prize. His most recent novels were To the End of the Land (2010), described by Jacqueline Rose in the Guardian as `without question one of the most powerful and moving novels I have ever read', and Falling Out of Time (2014).