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The rest is Commentary...
Every month, Commentary explores a key Jewish thinker or writer, with a brief biography, an introduction to their major works, and suggestions for further reading. Enjoy!
Author of the Month for August
| David Grossman was born in Jerusalem and studied philosophy and theater at the Hebrew University. He began a 25-year career at Israel Radio at the age of 10 as a correspondent for youth broadcasts. Grossman's prose is intricate, structurally complex and noted for its daring and innovative technique. Injustice as a human phenomenon is a central theme, whether it is a socio - political condition or psychological obsession. |
David Grossman
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| Internationally acclaimed as a superb author, David Grossman expresses the courage, pain and occasionally brutal truth of Israeli reality with a strength and honesty rarely equaled.
A writer of six extraordinry novels, two nonfiction efforts, a play, and several children's books, Grossman' s books refuse easy categorization. He has been hailed by some as Israel's best journalist and compared by US reviewers to such literary luminaries as Gunter Grass and Gabriel Garcia Marquez for his seamless weaving of fantasy and reality. Grossman utilizes a wide range of literary devises--especially frequently shifting voices and points of view--to force into relief the more human aspects, dimensions, and repercussions of the ongoing Middle Eastern conflict. David Grossman has won numerous awards for his writing. Among them are the Prime Minister's Prize for Hebrew Literature, the Israeli Publisher's Prize for best novel, the Vallombrosa Prize, and the Nelly Sachs prize. He has worked as a journalist for a number of publications, including Kol Israel (Israeli Radio ). He lives in Israel with his wife, two sons and daughter. |
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Essential Reading
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Just out! Lovers and Strangers
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Here are two accounts of love - of men and women, mothers and daughters, strangers who for a brief moment become intimate. Souls are bared, secrets are revealed and stories are told. In Frenzy, a man and a woman are driving through the night. Shaul is convinced his wife is having an affair. He feverishly imagines her with her lover: their talk, their lovemaking, every painful detail. Esther has never seen the human side of her brilliant and aloof brother-in-law. But tonight in the car, Shaul unburdens himself to her, recreating an affair he has never witnessed. Is he mad? Or has he divined the truth? Esther does not know but his wild and rich imaginings awaken in her, a distant memory of true love.
In Another life is about a different - more redemptive - act of imagination. Rotem, a writer, has spent most of her life being angry at her mother - Nilli, the beautiful yoga teacher with her lovers and misadventures - who is so different from her awkward, unhappy daughter. But now Nilli is dying and Rotem, who has finally
found happiness in London, must return to say goodbye. She arrives with a double-edged gift: a story about Nilli, full of accusations, empathy, love and forgiveness. David Grossman turns men and women inside out, writing about their innermost thoughts with immense depth and power. Tender, profound and erotic, these are extraordinary stories.
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Assaf has reluctantly taken a dull summer job working for the City
Sanitation Department. But the long days take a strange turn when he is
ordered to find out who owns a distressed stray Labrador and ask them to pay a fine. Across the city, the dog’s lonely owner, Tamar, is preparing her own mission - to rescue a young drug addict caught up in Jerusalem’s dangerous underworld. Searching the streets of Jerusalem for Tamar, Assaf’s life is about to irreversibly change. All he can do is hold onto the rope around the dog’s neck as together they start to run.
I magical-realist journey
into the gritty Jerusalem of homelessness and hate, and the extraordinary
palace of the spirit and inspiration.
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See Under: Love |
Grossman's second novel, See Under: Love, follows the experiences of Momik, the child of Holocaust survivors, as he attempts to understand and reimagine the experiences of his relatives. The book drew praise for its innovative blend of modernist literary techniques and sensitive portrayal of a young boy. Michiko Kakutani in her New York Times review called the book, "a remarkable and important novel [that] tackles the pivotal literary and philosophical issues spawned by this sad, tormented age."
An extraordinary magical-realist tale that deals with the unspoken legacy that still defines the
Israeli psyche.
The Zigzag Kid A hijacked train whisks an imaginative young boy on an unforgettable
The Yellow Wind The Yellow Wind, Grossman's first book
of journalism, caused a sensation upon publication. Geraldine Brooks in The Wall Street Journal declared the book, "Invaluable. It should be alongside the road maps at Ben-Gurion Airport, for it is a map of the psychological distances that now separate not only occupier from occupied, but willing from unwilling conquerors." Walter Reich in the New York Times Book Review said, " All are bound to learn something about the conflict they never knew before, something that illuminates the news and the reality that produces it. ..something deep and achingly, damnably true."
As road-map to Israeli identity, this work is unequalled and
particularly relevant today. Previous
Authors of the Month
Dan Jacobson
PB £7.99
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.
Written for his son's Bar-mitzva, this book takes you on glorious
journey; can be enjoyed by the youthful of spirit of all ages.
PB £9.95
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Saul Bellow
Aharon Appelfeld
Howard Jacobson
Will Eisner
