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Knopf
October 2010
On Sale: September 21, 2010
592 pages
ISBN: 0307592979
EAN: 9780307592972
Hardcover
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Fiction
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, a middle-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 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 joys and anguish of raising
children. Never have we seen so clearly the reality and
surreality of 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.
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