David Grossman

Israel also has a “Big Three” when it comes to literature, and David Grossman (1954) is one of them (alongside Amos Oz and A.B. Yehoshua). He is known for, among others, Zie: liefde, Het zigzagkind, De stem van Tamar (filmed as Someone to Run With) and Haar lichaam weet het. Recently, his essays on literature and politics have attracted much attention. The collection, titled Writing in the Dark, includes Grossman’s famous 2006 speech, delivered at the commemoration of the assassination of former Prime Minister Rabin.

In his new novel Een vrouw op de vlucht voor een bericht, he does not explicitly address the issues that so often make the headlines in Israel, but instead aims to make tangible what it means for individuals to live in a country like Israel—a country where everything one does takes place against the backdrop of “the situation”, and where a sense of conflict, fear and uncertainty is ever-present.

Een vrouw op de vlucht voor een bericht tells the story of a mother who sees her son go off to war and tries to protect him by thinking and talking about him as much as possible. She does so during a journey through Israel; she has left her home so as not to have to hear what is happening to her son.

This perspective results in an epic about the Israeli condition since 1967. The story is inspired by Grossman’s own experience; tragically, his son was killed while serving his military duty. The novel was largely finished by then, but, as Grossman writes in the afterword, “the echo chamber of reality in which the final version was created had changed more than ever before.”

Een vrouw op de vlucht voor een bericht is considered in Israel to be one of the most important books of the past decade. During BorderKitchen, David Grossman is interviewed about his novel by Marcel Möring.