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A bestselling love story of two teenagers - and one missing dog - on the run in Jerusalem by the highly esteemed author of The Zigzag Kid 'Brings together the differing aspects of his writing in a book that unites social realism and dizzy teenage romance ... This is a book about feelings, about highs and lows, chemical, emotional, religious' Daily Telegraph Earnest, awkward and painfully shy, sixteen-year-old Assaf is having the worst summer of his life. With his big sister gone and his best friend suddenly the most popular kid in their class, Assaf spends his days at a lowly summer job in Jerusalem City Hall and his evenings alone, watching television and playing games on the Internet. One morning, Assaf's routine is interrupted by an absurd assignment: to find the owner of a stray yellow labrador. Meanwhile on the other side of the city, Tamar, a talented singer with a lonely, tempestuous soul, undertakes an equally unpromising mission: to rescue a young drug addict from the Jerusalem underworld ... and, eventually, to find her dog.
In Falling Out of Time, David Grossman has created a genre-defying drama - part play, part prose, pure poetry - to tell the story of bereaved parents setting out to reach their lost children. It begins in a small village, in a kitchen, where a man announces to his wife that he is leaving, embarking on a journey in search of their dead son.The man - called simply the 'Walking Man' - paces in ever-widening circles around the town. One after another, all manner of townsfolk fall into step with him (the Net Mender, the Midwife, the Elderly Maths Teacher, even the Duke), each enduring his or her own loss. The walkers raise questions of grief and bereavement: Can death be overcome by an intensity of speech or memory? Is it possible, even for a fleeting moment, to call to the dead and free them from their death? Grossman's answer to such questions is a hymn to these characters, who ultimately find solace and hope in their communal act of breaching deathâe(tm)s hermetic separateness. For the reader, the solace is in their clamorous vitality, and in the gift of Grossmanâe(tm)s storytelling âe" a realm where loss is not merely an absence, but a life force of its own.
INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE NOMINEE • A remarkable novel of suffering, love, and healing—the story of three generations of women on an unlikely journey to a Croatian island and a secret that needs to be told—from the internationally best-selling author of To the End of the Land “A magnificent book ... The way Grossman writes about these regions is unique, with a deep understanding of our experience.” —Josip Mlakić, Express (Croatia) More Than I Love My Life is the story of three strong women: Vera, age ninety; her daughter, Nina; and her granddaughter, Gili, who at thirty-nine is a filmmaker and a wary consumer of affection. A bitter secret divides each mother and daughter pair, ...
In exhilarating and lucid prose, Grossman gives us a provocative new take on the story of Samson: his battle with the lion, the three hundred burning foxes, the women he bedded, the one he loved and who betrayed him and the destruction of the temple. It reveals the journey of a lonely and tortured soul, whose search for a true home echoes our own private struggles.
A Guardian and New Statesman Book of the Year The setting is a comedy club in a small Israeli town. An audience that has come expecting an evening of amusement instead sees a comedian falling apart on stage; an act of disintegration, a man crumbling, as a matter of choice, before their eyes. They could get up and leave, or boo and whistle and drive him from the stage, if they were not so drawn to glimpse his personal hell. Dovaleh G, a veteran stand-up comic - charming, erratic, repellent - exposes a wound he has been living with for years: a fateful and gruesome choice he had to make between the two people who were dearest to him. A Horse Walks into a Bar is a shocking and breathtaking read. Betrayals between lovers, the treachery of friends, guilt demanding redress. Flaying alive both himself and the people watching him, Dovaleh G provokes both revulsion and empathy from an audience that doesn't know whether to laugh or cry - and all this in the presence of a former childhood friend who is trying to understand why he's been summoned to this performance.
One man attempts to come to terms with his family’s history with the Holocaust in this “dazzling work of imagination” (Michiko Kakutani, New York Times). “A phantasmagoric novel . . . that successfully merges history, personal mythology, and literary experiment. . . . A tour de force: difficult, elusive, circular, and a triumph.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) In this powerful novel by one of Israel’s most prominent writers, Momik, the only child of Holocaust survivors, grows up in the shadow of his parents’ history. Determined to exorcise the Nazi “beast” from their shattered lives and prepare for a second holocaust he knows is coming, Momik increasingly shields himsel...
Ora, a middle-aged Israeli mother, is about to celebrate her son Ofer's release from army service when he returns to the front for a major offensive. Instead of waiting at home for the 'notifiers' who could arrive at any moment to tell her of her son's fate, she sets off for a hike in Galilee, leaving no forwarding address. If a mother is not there to receive the news, a son cannot die, can he? Recently estranged from her husband, Ora drags along an unlikely companion: their former best friend and her former lover Avram, the man who in fact turns out to be her son's biological father. As they sleep out in the hills, ford rivers and cross valleys, Ora recounts, step by step and word by word, the story of her son's birth, life and possible death, in one mother's magical, passionate and heartbreaking attempt to keep her son safe from harm.
A hijacked train whisks an imaginative young boy on an unforgettable adventure, in which he makes discoveries about his own family's past and a wild woman who rescued his Israeli policeman father from a vat of chocolate. 'An affecting tale of the triumph of hope over desperate circumstances ... Napoleon's upbeat, colloquial style is extremely readable and the relationship between ZigZag and Singer is treated with as much depth of perception and sensitivity as that of John Steinbeck's Lenny and George. Against a backdrop of the dregs of American society and the impotence of social welfare ZigZag is a modern day Of Mice and Men' -The Times
Essays on politics and literature from one of world literature's most respected voices. 'The bravest and most clear-headed interpreter of the Israeli-Palestinian divide' Observer 'The most honest, soul-searching book yet written by an Israeli - or, for that matter, by a Palestinian - on an agony that neither of them alone can bring to an end' L.A. Times Throughout his career, David Grossman has been a voice for peace and reconciliation between Israel and its Arab citizens and neighbours. In five new essays on politics and literature in Israel today, he addresses the conscience of a country that has lost faith in its leaders and its ideals. This collection includes an already-famous speech that Grossman delivered in the presence of Ehud Olmert, attacking Olmert's policies and his prosecution of Israel's disastrous Lebanon war in 2006, the war that took the life of Grossman's 20-year-old son Uri. Moving, humane, clear-sighted, and courageous, these essays on literature and the Holocaust, and artistic creation as well as politics and philosophy are a cri de coeur from a calm voice of reason at a time of uncertainty and despair.
In The Hug, internationally renowned author David Grossman tells the moving story of the moment when Ben realizes that no two living creatures are alike—not his mother and father, their beautiful dog Miracle or the ants who march side by side at his feet and appear identical—and the loneliness he feels knowing that there is no one else quite like him in the whole world. But just as he is feeling the most alone he has ever felt, he is soothed by his mother’s loving hug. Timeless, touching, and beautifully produced, The Hug is a charming and important work for parents and children encountering the feeling of being different, together