My favorite Israeli author is David Grossman. His book “Zig Zag Children” was quoted by my siblings and me for most of our teenaage years.  Grossman’s latest novel, “Isha Borahat Mibesora” which translates as “A Woman Running from News” (English title: “Until the end of the land”), was released yesterday in Israel and has already gotten amazing reviews.

The novel is about Ora, a woman who takes off from home when her soldier son leaves to take part in a major military operation. She runs away from her home in order not to torture herself sitting and waiting for bad news to arrive. She travels to the Galilee and contacts Avram, her childhood sweetheart, and wanders on foot with him across Israel. In order to protect her son and give him strength, she talks about him throughout the entire journey and relives the story of his life.

I am fascinated by this book for two reasons. Firstly, Grossman, like most Israeli authors, has tended to shy away from the Arab-Israeli conflict as the focus of his fiction. While he doesn’t ignore “the situation,” it is usually in the background, while the primary subjects are his characters as individuals. In this book, the conflict itself creates the story. 

Secondly, the heartbreaking reality of the conflict on the author’s own life when his youngest son is killed in Lebanon as he himself is close to completing his book, is very moving, and quite tragic. Grossman’s own life and his fiction have become intertwined.

Ahead of his latest book’s release, Grossman decided not to give media interviews.

Instead he released this e-mail to the media:

“I started writing this book in May 2003, six months before the end of my oldest son Yonatan’s military service and six months before his younger brother, Uri, was drafted. Both of them served in the Armored Corps. Uri was very familiar with the plot of the book and the characters. Every time we spoke on the phone and especially when he was on leave, he would ask what was new with the story and in the lives of its heroes (’What did you do to them this week?’ was his usual question). He spent most of his military service in the occupied territories, on patrols and in observation posts, ambushes and at checkpoints, and occasionally would share with me his experiences. I had a feeling, or more accurately, a wish that the book I was writing would protect him. On August 12, 2006, during the last hours of the Second Lebanon War, Uri was killed in South Lebanon. His tank was hit by a missile during an operation to rescue a damaged tank. Also killed with Uri was the entire crew of the tank: Benaya Rein, Adam Goren and Alexander Bonimovitch. After the end of the shiva, I went back to the book. Most of it was already written. What changed, more than anything else, was the resonance of the reality in which the final version was written.”

The book has not come out in English yet, but I’m sure it will in the near future (most of his other books have been translated). But I will make sure to write my opinion when I finish the book.