To the End of the Land
David Grossman (trans., Jessica Cohen), 2010
Knopf Doubleday
592 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307592972
Summary
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. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 25, 1954
• Where—Jerusalem (Israel)
• Education—University of Jerusalem
• Awards—see below
• Currently—lives on the outskirts of Jerusalem
David Grossman is an Israeli author whose books have been translated into more than 30 languages and won numerous prizes. He is also a noted activist and critic of Israeli policy towards Palestinians. The Yellow Wind, his nonfiction study of the life of Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip met with acclaim abroad but sparked controversy at home.
He addressed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in his 2010 novel, The End of the Land. Since that book's publication he has written a children's book, an opera for children and several poems.
Background
David Grossman was born in Jerusalem. He is the eldest of two brothers. His mother, Michaella, was born in Palestine; his father, Yitzhak, emigrated from Poland with his widowed mother at the age of nine. His mother's side of the family were Zionist and poor, his grandfather having paved roads in the Galilee and supplementing his income by buying and selling rugs. His grandmother was a manicurist.
On his father's side was his grandmother who had left Poland after being harassed by police, never before having left the region where she'd been born. Along with her son and daughter she travelled to Palestine where she became a cleaner in wealthy neighbourhoods. Grossman's father was first a bus driver, then a librarian, and it was through him that David—"a reading child"—was able to build up an interest in literature which would later become his career. Grossman recalled: "He gave me many things, but what he mostly gave me was Sholem Aleichem." Aleichem, who was born in Ukraine, is one of the greatest writers in Yiddish, though he is now best known as the man whose stories were the inspiration for Fiddler on the Roof. (See LitLovers Reading Guide for Tevye, the Dairyman.)
In 1971, Grossman began his national service working in military intelligence. Although he was in the army when the Yom Kippur war broke out in 1973, he saw no action.
Grossman studied philosophy and theater at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. After university, Grossman began working in radio, where he'd once been a child actor, eventually becoming an anchor on Kol Yisrael, Israel's national broadcasting service. In 1988, however, he was sacked for refusing to downplay the news that the Palestinian leadership had declared its own state and, for the first time, conceded Israel's right to exist.
Grossman lives in Mevasseret Zion on the outskirts of Jerusalem. He is married to Michal Grossman, a child psychologist and the mother of his three children, Jonathan, 28, Ruth, 18, and the late Uri.
Politics and activism
Grossman is an outspoken peace activist who is politically left wing.
Initially supportive of Israel's action during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict on the grounds of self defence, on August 10, 2006, he and fellow authors Amos Oz and A.B. Yehoshua held a press conference at which they strongly urged the government to agree to a ceasefire that would create the basis for a negotiated solution saying:
We had a right to go to war. But things got complicated... I believe that there is more than one course of action available.
Two days later, his 20-year-old son Uri, a staff sergeant in an armoured unit, was killed by an anti-tank missile during an IDF operation in southern Lebanon shortly before the ceasefire. However, Grossman explained that the death of his son did not change his opposition to Israel's policy towards the Palestinians. Although Grossman had carefully avoided writing about politics, in his stories, if not his journalism, the death of his son prompted him to deal with the Israeli-Palestintian conflict in greater detail. This appeared in his latest book To The End of the Land.
Four months after his son's death, Grossman addressed a crowd of 100,000 Israelis who had gathered to mark the anniversary of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. He denounced Ehud Olmert's government for a failure of leadership and he argued that reaching out to the Palestinians was the best hope for progress in the region.
Of course I am grieving, but my pain is greater than my anger. I am in pain for this country and for what you [Olmert] and your friends are doing to it. About his personal link to the war, Grossman said:
There were people who stereotyped me, who considered me this naive leftist who would never send his own children into the army, who didn't know what life was made of. I think those people were forced to realise that you can be very critical of Israel and yet still be an integral part of it; I speak as a reservist in the Israeli army myself.
Opposition to Israeli Settlements
In 2010 Grossman, his wife, and her family attended demonstrations against the spread of Israeli Settlements. While attending weekly demonstrations in Sheikh Jarrah [in east Jerusalem] against Jewish settlers taking over houses in Palestinian neighbourhoods he was assaulted by police. About the incident Grossman said, "we were beaten by the police." When asked by a reporter for the Guardian newspaper about how a renowned writer could be beaten he replied, "I don't know if they know me at all."
Awards and honours
1984—Prime Minister's Prize for Creative Work
2004—Premio Flaiano (Italian)
2004—Bialik Prize for literature (co-recipient)
2007—Emet Prize
2008—Geschwister-Scholl-Preis
2010—Peace Prize of the German Book Trade.
On February 2, 2007, Grossman was awarded the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa by the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
[Grossman] weaves the essences of private life into the tapestry of history with deliberate and delicate skill; he has created a panorama of breathtaking emotional force, a masterpiece of pacing, of dedicated storytelling, with characters whose lives are etched with extraordinary, vivid detail. While his novel has the vast sweep of pure tragedy, it is also at times playful, and utterly engrossing.... This is one of those few novels that feel as though they have made a difference to the world.
Colm Toibin - New York Times Book Review
Israeli novelist Grossman returns with an epic yet intimate story of an Israeli family and the shadow of war that haunts it. A love triangle between Ora, Avram, and Ilan ends when Avram returns to war, and Ora settles down with Ilan to raise two sons. But when her youngest is called to duty, Ora flees for Galilee, dragging with her Avram, who, deeply scared by his experience as a POW during the Yom Kippur War, has refused contact with her for years. Their shared history poignantly reveals the way conflict, war, and the loss of humanity have traumatized generations of people living in this region. Grossman, whose own soldier son was killed during the writing of this novel, connects a wide-reaching canvas of battles and bombings to the intimate realities of the relationships among family and friends. Although the atmosphere of paranoia and the flood of details can overwhelm, they also connect the reader to the characters so hypnotically that this nearly 600-page literary novel reads like a thriller.
Publishers Weekly
Ora, who has eagerly awaited her son Ofer's release from the Israeli army, is devastated when he voluntarily extends his service; she has a premonition that he will not return alive. To escape what she feels is the inevitable official notification of his death, she decides to undertake a journey planned for the two of them, an adventurous hike in Galilee, a remote mountainous region in northern Israel, telling no one how to contact her. She enlists the company of an old friend and lover, Avram, himself an open war wound, still suffering the ill effects of captivity in a prisoner-of-war camp 20 years earlier. Convinced that talking about Ofer will keep him alive, Ora fills Avram in on her life since Avram's captivity, detailing her relationship with her now-estranged husband, Ilan, the third person in their once three musketeer-like friendship, as well as her childhood and her experience as a mother. Verdict: Glimmers of humanity, life, and hope counterbalance the sense of despair, foreboding, and sadness that permeate this detailed and beautiful chronicle of Ora's, Ofer's, and Avram's lives. A final heartbreaking note from the author makes the story all the more poignant. Highly recommended. —Sarah Conrad Weisman, Corning Community Coll., NY
Library Journal
(Starred review.) [A] powerful meditation on war, friendship, and family. Instead of celebrating her son Ofer’s discharge from the Israeli Army, Ora finds her life turned upside down and inside out when he reenlists and is sent back to the front for a major offensive. ... [T]he toll exacted by living in a land and among a people constantly at war is excruciatingly evident. —Margaret Flanagan
Booklist
Discussion Questions
1. What one word would you use to describe the central theme of this novel? Is it a political novel?
2. In an interview, Grossman said about grief, “The first feeling you have is one of exile. You are being exiled from everything you know.” How do both grief and exile figure into this story?
3. Throughout the novel is the notion of tapestry, of threads being woven. What does that tapestry signify?
4. What do you think was Grossman’s intent with the prologue? What did this opening lead you to expect from the rest of the novel? Was it significant to you as a reader, later in the story, to have known these characters as teenagers?
5. On page 21, Ora says, “I’m no good at saving people.” Why does she say this? Is it true?
6. What function does Sami serve in the novel? What do we learn about Ora through her interactions with him?
7. Why does Ora consider Ofer’s reenlistment to be a betrayal? Why do his whispered, on-camera instructions affect her so strongly?
8. Discuss Adam’s assertion that Ora is “an unnatural mother” (page 98). What do you think he means by that? What does Ora take it to mean?
9. On page 134, Ora tells Sami to drive “to where the country ends.” His reply: “For me it ended a long time ago.” What does he mean by that? How does this change your interpretation of the novel’s title?
10. What is the significance of Ofer’s film, in which there are no physical beings, only their shadows?
11. In both Adam and Ofer, the influence of nature vs. nurture seems quite fluid. How is each like his biological father, and how does each resemble the man to whom he is not related by blood?
12. What role does food play in the novel? What does vegetarianism, especially, signify?
13. On pages 284–85, Ora says to Avram, “Just remember that sometimes bad news is actually good news that you didn’t understand. Remember that what might have been bad news can turn into good news over time, perhaps the best news you need.” What is she hoping for here? Does her advice turn out to be accurate?
14. Why does Ora refuse to go back for her notebook? As a reader, could you identify with Ora’s actions? What about elsewhere in the novel?
15. What do we learn about Ora, Ilan, and Ofer through the story of Adam’s compulsive behavior? What is “the force of no” (page 398)?
16. Discuss the significance of whose name Ora draws from the hat. Did she choose that person intentionally? How might the lives of Ora, Ilan, and Avram have been different if the other name were drawn?
17. Why does Ora react so strongly to what happened with Ofer in Hebron? How does it relate to what happened to Avram as a POW? Why does her reaction lead to the implosion of her family?
18. When Ora says to Avram, “Maybe you’ll even have a girl” (page 572), what is she really saying?
19. Discuss the final scene of the novel. What does Avram’s vision signify? Was Ora’s motivation for the hike wrong, as she fears?
20. How did Grossman’s personal note at the end change your experience of the novel? What seems possible for Ora and Avram, and the other characters in the book, at the end of the story?
(Questions issued by publisher.)