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.)