Rachel S. Harris is assistant professor of comparative literature and Jewish studies at the University of Illinois. She will interview David Grossman on Sunday, Nov. 13 at 10 am at Thorne Auditorium.
David Grossman
A message arrives only when someone receives it. Ora, terrified of the message that might come, flees her home setting out on a long hike across Israel. This is the premise behind David Grossman’s new novel To the End of the Land.
The protagonist and narrator of the novel, Ora, dreads the final month of her son Ofer’s army service; the Second Lebanon War has broken out and she fears hearing that he was killed in action. Staying away from home, but constantly thinking of him, Ora believes, might just save Ofer’s life.
To the End of the Land is a haunting novel; an epic-journey of 650 pages. Not a traditional voyage of discovery or a travelogue of the Israeli landscape, but rather the long tale of Israel’s wars of survival through the experiences of one woman. Her narrative, and that of her travelling companion Avram, reveal the enormous price such commitments cost.
David Grossman is one of Israel’s finest and best known writers. He has gained the statue of prophetic author since the publication of his remarkable non-fiction book The Yellow Wind (1987). A brave and controversial report on the dangerous situation in the West Bank and the impossibility of maintaining the status quo between Jews and Arabs, the book appeared less than a year before the first intifada. This grassroots uprising among Palestinians transformed the nature of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Grossman himself began to argue for a two-State solution, an idea that met with reluctance in government circles at first, but has since become the dominant political policy for resolving the situation.
In a tragic irony, Grossman’s new novel also has the quality of prophecy. While working on the final stages of To the End of the Land, he received the message that Uri Grossman, his younger son, was killed in the Lebanon war. Uri was only two weeks away from his 21st birthday. The nation was swept up in grief and affection for the bereaved author and his family. An outpouring of public grief was evident in the press, while the forthcoming novel became intertwined with the author’s personal tragedy, in the Israeli literary imagination.
The story of Uri Grossman shadows the book in the guise of Ofer. But there is also another story: the capture and torture of Ora’s companion Avraham, during the Yom Kippur War (1973). His story is a contrast that provides a possible source of hope. The terrible experience of violence and solitary confinement has rendered him physically and mentally damaged for the past thirty years, but walking through the land now redeems him. It provides him with the strength to finally tell his story and confront the parts of his life he had always avoided. Perhaps here too Grossman can be seen as a prophet! In a country where every soldier killed or wounded in action is reported in the press, Gilad Shalit is the other soldier’s story most associated with the Lebanon War. Released earlier this month (18th October 2011) he was kidnapped by Hamas in June 2006, and held captive in Gaza for five years. Avram’s experiences as a prisoner of war and his life as a damaged person after his release warn of the larger societal issues that war engenders. They also raise questions about the relationship between public and private grief.
To the End of the World is a novel of universal appeal that extends beyond the particular Israeli narrative. It presents larger questions about the cost of war on a nation’s psyche, any nation, anywhere. It is about more than the death of a single soldier, or even the anguish of a family fearing a message that their child had been lost for ever. Rather it speaks of the deep scars that battle leaves in the heart of the whole nation.
Northwestern University Law School Thorne Auditorium: Sunday, November 13 at 10 am
Tags: David Grossman, Rachel S. Harris, jewish studies, To the End of the Land, Arab Israeli conflict, Lebanon war
Posted on Tuesday, Nov 01 by Rachel S. Harris
