To The End of the Land [Hardcover]

`This is a great novel, a rare example of a book that lives up to its billing,... quite literally, unforgettable'
--Sunday Herald

`...this is a powerful and memorable novel, which movingly evokes the strains of war and peace in one household... -- The Sunday Times

`...extraordinary epic of love, war and sorrow...Stunning -- brilliantly written and beautifully constructed.' -- The Times

`...a deeply serious, utterly honest work about the state of Israel.' -- Financial Times

'...a novel which deals with...love, intimacy, war, memory and fear of personal and national annihilation--and has overwhelmingly achieved everything.' -- The Independent

'...people are often accused of failing to see...the Israeli...view. To the End of the Land sears this...onto the memory. -- Sunday Times Culture Magazine

`David Grossman explores how words illuminate the darkest landscapes and how lives can be shaped and preserved through stories' --Daily Mail

`...wonderful, and desperately sad' --Metro

'Sorrow and magnificence go hand in hand...potent, moving and emotionally raw. To the End of the Land is unforgettable' --Marie Claire

'...This is a powerful epic of love, loss and loyalty'
-- Psychologies Magazine

"Grossman's account of Ora and Avram's lengthening flight from their painful lives is a tour de force."
--Spectator

"Extraordinary, impassioned [...]without question one of the most powerful and moving novels I have ever read" --The Guardian

"Honeyed and portentous, rhythmic and often breathless, the prose sweeps the reader into a pool of shimmering reflection"
--TLS

"An eloquent and captivating read, and quite possibly a landmark novel in Israeli fiction."
--Timeout

"often impressive, sometimes touching" --The London Review of Books

'He is the finest living novelist I have read. His work is visceral and clear-headed. Though I loved Franzen's Freedom, Grossman's novel is better' --Observer

`To define David Grossman's masterly new novel as the ultimate anti-war oeuvre would not do it justice...To the End of the Land is richer and more complex than a chronicle of war. It is an intimate portrayal of a woman and mother, Ora, who has been compared to Flaubert's Emma or Tolstoy's Anna...With characters with whom the reader can empathise, a powerful if disturbing theme and an element of suspense and the unknown, Grossman's novel, while not easy to read, is well worth the effort'
--The Tablet

From one of Israel's most acclaimed writers comes a novel of extraordinary power about family life - the greatest human drama - and the cost of war.

Ora, amiddle-aged Israeli mother, is on the verge of celebrating her son Ofer's release from army service when he returns to the front for a major offensive. In a fit of preemptive grief and magical thinking, she sets out for a hike in the Galilee, leaving no forwarding information for the 'notifiers' who might darken her door with the worst possible news. Recently estranged from her husband, Ilan, she drags along an unlikely companion: their former best friend and her former lover Avram, once a brilliant artistic spirit. Avram served in the army alongside Ilan when they were young, but their lives were forever changed one weekend when the two jokingly had Ora draw lots to see which of them would get the few days' leave being offered by their commander - a chance act that sent Avram into Egpyt and the Yom Kippur War, where he was brutally tortured as a POW. In the aftermath, a virtual hermit, he refused to keep in touch with the family and has never met the boy. Now, as Ora and Avram sleep out in the hills, ford rivers and cross valleys, avoiding all news from the front, she gives him the gift of Ofer, word by word; she supplies the whole story of her motherhood, a retelling that keeps Ofer very much alive for Ora and for the reader, and opens Avram to human bonds undreamed of in his broken world. Their walk has a 'war and peace' rhythm, as their conversation places the most hideous trials of war next to the daily joys and anguish of raising children. Never have we seen so clearly the reality and surrealityof daily life in Israel, the currents of ambivalence about war within one household, and the burdens that fall on each generation anew.

Grossman's rich imagining of a family in love and crisis makes for one of the great antiwar novels of our time.

David Grossman was born in Jerusalem on January 25, 1954 and studied philosophy and theatre atthe Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is one of the leading Israeli writers of his generation, and the author of numerous pieces of fiction, nonfiction and children's literature. His work has been translated into 25 languages around the world.