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Download high-resolution image Look inside

To the End of the Land

Part of Vintage International

Author David Grossman
Look inside
Paperback
$19.00 US
Knopf | Vintage
On sale Aug 09, 2011 | 672 Pages | 978-0-307-47640-1
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  • English > Comparative Literature: Middle Eastern and North African > Israeli
  • About
  • Excerpt
  • Awards
  • Author
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Christian Science Monitor, The Economist, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and The Pittsburgh Post Gazette

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK

Just before his release from service in the Israeli army, Ora’s son Ofer is sent back to the front for a major offensive. In a fit of preemptive grief and magical thinking, so that no bad news can reach her, Ora sets out on an epic hike in the Galilee. She is joined by an unlikely companion—Avram, a former friend and lover with a troubled past—and as they sleep out in the hills, Ora begins to conjure her son. Ofer’s story, as told by Ora, becomes a surprising balm both for her and for Avram—and a mother’s powerful meditation on war and family.

“A masterpiece. . . . One of the few novels that feel as though they have made a difference to the world.” —Colm Tóibín, The New York Times Book Review

“A boundary-pushing novel. . . . Like all great literature, it is an act of generosity, opening itself to every human possibility. . . . Grossman invites us to look beneath the shrill headlines, beyond the roadblocks, within the clenched fist—to see Israel’s predicament not as ‘the situation’ but as many situations, one for every person.” —The Washington Post

“Enthralling. . . . Unsparing yet compassionate . . . Grossman’s electrifying narrative seems excruciatingly timely. . . . Unforgettable. . . . The unstudied beauty and psychological complexity of Grossman’s language, his deft and lively dialogue, are utterly compelling. . . . Rendered in Jessica Cohen’s exquisite translation, Grossman’s symphonic novel straddles despair and hope, a journey into inner and outer landscapes, delivering stunning rewards.” —The Miami Herald

“Magnificent. . . . A powerful meditation. . . . Foremost among Grossman’s achievements is the creation of Ora, a modern-day Scheherazade and icon of the mourning mother.” —The Seattle Times

“Grossman’s greatest fictional creation [is] Ora: tender, passionate, angry, funny, self-doubting, intuitive, above all a woman of ‘abundance.’ . . . [Her story] encompasses both the complex fullness of one life and the broader history of Israel’s modern conflicts. . . . This most Israeli of Grossman’s novels is also his most universal.” —George Packer, The New Yorker

“A tour de force. . . . Unforgettable. . . . [Grossman’s] best.” —The Star-Ledger

“Penetrating. . . . Grossman has produced a sprawling novel that stretches over nearly 35 years of Israeli history. Along with war and peace, life and death, Grossman reckons with the emotional and sexual geometry of Israelis, particularly the secular liberals now in middle age, much like their author.” —Newsday

“This is a story of love and friendship, family and society, parents and children, life and death. And war and peace. . . . Whether lushly descriptive, emotive or narrative, Grossman’s writing is both controlled and passionate. . . . Ora’s voice is authentic and true, honed to perfection.” —Chicago Jewish Star

“Profound. . . . A reminder of what Israel—what any country—is capable of doing to its sons.” —The Boston Globe

“There are some writers in whose words one recognizes the texture of life. David Grossman is such a writer. He is a master of the emotionally accurate and significant. His characters don’t so much lie on the page as rise before the reader’s eyes, in three dimensions, their skin covered in prose that both stabs with insight and shines with compassion.” —Yann Martel, author of Life of Pi

“Moving. . . . A convincing portrait of maternal grit and ingenuity in a time and place of relentless challenge. . . . In this powerful book, there are surprising answers of a kind, but the ongoing strife goes on.” —The Washington Times

“Very rarely you open a book and when you close it again nothing can ever be the same. Walls have been pulled down, barriers broken, a dimension of feeling has opened in you that was not there before. David Grossman has the ability to look inside a person and discover the unique essence of her humanity; his novels are about what it means to defend this essence against a world designed to extinguish it. To the End of the Land is his most powerful, unflinching story of this defense.” —Nicole Krauss, author of The History of Love

“A courageous and powerful antiwar novel.” —Kansas City Star

“Grossman’s most ambitious work to date. . . . His imagination is secular, worldly, self-questioning and ironic. The Israel he imagines, beautifully and sorrowfully, is not going to be saved by any divine intervention.” —The Economist

“Bold and uncompromising, this great emotional rush of a story sings and cries, exults and mourns.” —The Forward

“An extraordinary epic of love, war, and sorrow. . . . Stunning—brilliantly written and beautifully constructed.” —The Times (London)

“A deeply serious, utterly honest work about the state of Israel.” —Financial Times

“Flaubert created his Emma, Tolstoy made his Anna, and now we have Grossman’s Ora—as fully alive, as fully embodied, as any character in recent fiction. I devoured this long novel in a feverish trance.” —Paul Auster, author of Invisible
Prologue, 1967
 
 
HEY, GIRL, quiet!
 
Who is that?
 
Be quiet! You woke everyone up!
 
But I was holding her
 
Who?
 
On the rock, we were sitting together
 
What rock are you talking about? Let us sleep
 
Then she just fell
 
All this shouting and singing
 
But I was asleep
 
And you were shouting!
 
She just let go of my hand and fell
 
Stop it, go to sleep
 
Turn on a light
 
Are you crazy? They’ll kill us if we do that
 
Wait
 
What?
 
I was singing?
 
Singing, shouting, everything. Now be quiet
 
What was I singing?
 
What were you singing?!
 
In my sleep, what was I singing?
 
I’m supposed to know what you were singing? A bunch of shouts.
 
That’s what you were singing. What was I singing, she wants to know . . .
 
You don’t remember the song?
 
Look, are you nuts? I’m barely alive
 
But who are you?
 
Room Three
 
You’re in isolation, too?
 
Gotta get back
 
Don’t go . . . Did you leave? Wait, hello . . . Gone . . . But what was I singing?
 
 
AND the next night he woke her up again, angry at her again for singing at the top of her lungs and waking up the whole hospital, and she begged him to try to remember if it was the same song from the night before. She was desperate to know, because of her dream, which kept getting dreamed almost every night during those years. An utterly white dream. Everything in it was white, the streets and the houses and the trees and the cats and dogs and the rock at the edge of the cliff. And Ada, her redheaded friend, was also entirely white, without a drop of blood in her face or body. Without a drop of color in her hair. But he couldn’t remember which song it was this time, either. His whole body was shuddering, and she shuddered back at him from her bed. We’re like a pair of castanets, he said, and to her surprise, she burst out with bright laughter that tickled him inside. He had used up all his strength on the journey from his room to hers, thirty-five steps, resting after each one, holding on to walls, doorframes, empty food carts. Now he flopped onto the sticky linoleum floor in her doorway. For several minutes they both breathed heavily. He wanted to make her laugh again but he could no longer speak, and then he must have fallen asleep, until her voice woke him.
 
Tell me something
 
What? Who is it?
 
It’s me
 
You . . .
 
Tell me, am I alone in this room?
 
How should I know?
 
Are you, like, shivering?
 
Yeah, shivering
 
How high is yours?
 
It was forty this evening
 
Mine was forty point three. When do you die?
 
At forty-two
 
That’s close
 
No, no, you still have time
 
Don’t go, I’m scared
 
Do you hear?
 
What?
 
How quiet it is suddenly?
 
Were there booms before?
 
Cannons
 
I keep sleeping, and all of a sudden it’s nighttime again
 
’Cause there’s a blackout
 
I think they’re winning
 
Who?
 
The Arabs
 
No way
 
They’ve occupied Tel Aviv
 
What are you . . . who told you that?
 
I don’t know. Maybe I heard it
 
You dreamed it
 
No, they said it here, someone, before, I heard voices
 
It’s from the fever. Nightmares. I have them, too
 
My dream . . . I was with my friend
 
Maybe you know
 
What?
 
Which direction I came from
 
I don’t know anything here
 
How long for you?
 
Don’t know
 
Me, four days. Maybe a week
 
Wait, where’s the nurse?
 
At night she’s in Internal A. She’s an Arab
 
How do you know?
 
You can hear it when she talks
 
You’re shaking
 
My mouth, my whole face
 
But . . . where is everybody?
 
They’re not taking us to the bomb shelter
 
Why?
 
So we don’t infect them
 
Wait, so it’s just us—
 
And the nurse
 
I thought
 
What?
 
If you could sing it for me
 
That again?
 
Just hum
 
I’m leaving
 
If it was the other way around, I would sing to you
 
Gotta get back
 
Where?
 
Where, where, to lie with my forefathers, to bring me down with sorrow to the grave, that’s where
 
What? What was that? Wait, do I know you? Hey, come back
 
 
AND the next night, too, before midnight, he came to stand in her doorway and scolded her again and complained that she was singing in her sleep, waking him and the whole world, and she smiled to herself and asked if his room was really that far, and that was when he realized, from her voice, that she wasn’t where she had been the night before and the night before that.
 
Because now I’m sitting, she explained. He asked cautiously, But why are you sitting? Because I couldn’t sleep, she said. And I wasn’t singing. I was sitting here quietly waiting for you.
 
They both thought it was getting even darker. A new wave of heat, which may have had nothing to do with her illness, climbed up from Ora’s toes and sparked red spots on her neck and face. It’s a good thing it’s dark, she thought, and held her loose pajama collar up to her neck. Finally, from the doorway, he cleared his throat softly and said, Well, I have to get back. But why? she asked. He said he urgently had to tar and feather himself. She didn’t get it, but then she got it and laughed deeply. Come on, dummy, enough with your act, I put a chair out for you next to me.
 
He felt along the doorway, metal cabinets, and beds, until he stopped way off, leaned his arms on an empty bed, and panted loudly. I’m here, he groaned. Come closer to me, she said. Wait, let me catch my breath. The darkness filled her with courage and she said in a loud voice, in her voice of health, of beaches and paddleball and swimming out to the rafts on Quiet Beach, What are you afraid of? I don’t bite. He mumbled, Okay, okay, I get it, I’m barely alive. His grumbling tone and the heavy way he dragged his feet touched her. We’re kind of like an elderly couple, she thought.
 
Ouch!
 
What happened?
 
One of these beds just decided to . . . Fuck! So, have you heard of the Law of Malicious—
 
What did you say?
 
The Law of Malicious Furniture—heard of it?
 
Are you coming or not?
 
The trembling wouldn’t stop, and sometimes it turned into long shivers, and when they talked their speech was choppy, and they often had to wait for a pause in the trembling, a brief calming of the face and mouth muscles, and then they would quickly spit out the words in high, tense voices, and the stammering crushed the sentences in their mouths. How-old-are-you? Six-teen-and-you? And-a-quar-ter. I-have-jaun-dice, how-a-bout-you? Me? he said. I-think-it’s-an-in-fec-tion-of-the-o-va-ries.
 
Silence. He shuddered and breathed heavily. By-the-way-that-was-a-joke, he said. Not funny, she said. He groaned: I tried to make her laugh, but her sense of humor is too— She perked up and asked who he was talking to. He replied, To my joke writer, I guess I’ll have to fire him. If you don’t come over here and sit down right now, I’ll start singing, she threatened. He shivered and laughed. His laughter was as screechy as a donkey’s bray, a self-sustaining laughter, and she secretly gulped it down like medicine, like a prize.
 
He laughed so hard at her stupid little joke that she barely resisted telling him that lately she wasn’t good at making people roll around with laughter the way she used to. “When it comes to humor, she’s not much of a jester,” they sang about her at the Purim party this year. And it wasn’t just a minor shortcoming. For her it was crippling, a new defect that could grow bigger and more complicated. And she sensed that it was somehow related to some other qualities that were vanishing in recent years. Intuition, for example. How could a trait like that disappear so abruptly? Or the knack for saying the right thing at the right time. She had had it once, and now it was gone. Or even just wittiness. She used to be really sharp. The sparks just flew out of her. (Although, she consoled herself, it was a Purim song, and maybe they just couldn’t come up with a better rhyme for “Esther.”) Or her sense of love, she thought. Maybe that was part of her deterioration—her losing the capacity to really love someone, to burn with love, like the girls talked about, like in the movies. She felt a pang for Asher Feinblatt, her friend who went to the military boarding school, who was now a soldier, who had told her on the steps between Pevsner Street and Yosef Street that she was his soul mate, but who hadn’t touched her that time, either. Never once in two years had he put a hand or a finger on her, and maybe that never-touched-her also had something to do with it, and deep in her heart she felt that everything was somehow connected, and that things would grow clearer all the time, and she would keep discovering more little pieces of whatever awaited her.
 
For a moment she could see herself at fifty, tall and thin and withered, a scentless flower taking long, quick steps, her head bowed, a wide-brimmed straw hat hiding her face. The boy with the donkey laugh kept feeling his way toward her, getting closer and then farther away—it was as if he were doing it on purpose, she realized, like this was a kind of game for him—and he giggled and made fun of his own clumsiness and floated around the room in circles, and every so often he asked her to say something so he’d know which direction she was in: Like a lighthouse, he explained, but with sound. Smart-ass, she thought. He finally reached her bed and felt around and found the chair she had put out, and collapsed on it and breathed heavily like an old man. She could smell the sweat of his illness, and she pulled off one of her blankets and gave it to him and he wrapped it around himself and said nothing. They were both exhausted, and each of them shivered and moaned.
 
Still, she said later from under her blanket, your voice sounds familiar. Where are you from? Jerusalem, he said. I’m from Haifa, she said, accentuating slightly. They brought me here in an ambulance from Rambam Hospital, because of the complications. I have those too, he laughed, my whole life is complications. They sat quietly. He scratched his stomach and chest and grumbled, and she grumbled, too. That’s the worse thing about it, isn’t it? she said. She also scratched herself, with all ten fingernails. Sometimes I’m dying to peel all my skin off, just to make it stop. Every time she started talking, he could hear the soft sticky sound of her lips parting, and the tips of his fingers and toes throbbed.
 
Ora said, The ambulance driver said that at a time like this they need the ambulances for more important things.
 
Have you noticed that everyone here is angry at us? As if we purposely. . .
 
Because we’re the last ones left from the plague.
 
They sent home anyone who was feeling even a little bit better. Especially soldiers. Wham-bam, they kicked them right back to the army so they could make it in time for the war.
 
So there’s really going to be a war?
 
Are you kidding? There’s been a war for at least two days.
 
When did it start? she asked in a whisper.
 
Day before yesterday, I think. And I told you that already, yesterday or the day before, I can’t remember, the days get mixed up.
 
That’s right, you did say . . . Ora was dumbstruck. Clots of strange and terrifying dreams drifted through her.
 
How could you not hear? he murmured. There are sirens and artillery all the time, and I heard helicopters landing. There are probably a million casualties by now.
 
But what’s going on?
 
I don’t know, and there’s no one to talk to here. They have no patience for us.
 
Then who’s taking care of us?
 
Right now there’s just that thin little Arab woman, the one who cries. Have you heard her?
 
That’s a person crying? Ora was stunned. I thought it was an animal wailing. Are you sure?
 
It’s a person, for sure.
 
But how come I haven’t seen her?
 
She kind of comes and goes. She does the tests and leaves your medicine and food on a tray. It’s just her now, day and night. He sucked in his cheeks and said thoughtfully, It’s funny that the only person they left us with is an Arab, isn’t it? They probably don’t let Arabs treat the wounded.
 
But why does she cry? What happened to her?
 
How should I know?
 
Ora sat up straight and her body hardened, and she said coldly, quietly, They’ve occupied Tel Aviv, I’m telling you. Nasser and Hussein are already sipping coffee at a café on Dizengoff Street.
 
Where did you come up with that? He sounded frightened.
 
I heard it last night, or today, I’m almost positive, maybe it was on her radio, I heard it, they’ve occupied Beersheba and Ashkelon and Tel Aviv.
 
No, no, that can’t be. Maybe it’s the fever, it’s because of your fever, ’cause there’s no way! You’re crazy, there’s no way they’ll win.
 
There is, there is, she mumbled to herself, and thought, What do you even know about what could or couldn’t happen.
Copyright © 2010 by David Grossman, Translated by Jessica Cohen. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
  • WINNER | 2010
    National Jewish Book Awards
  • WINNER | 2010
    National Jewish Book Awards
  • WINNER | 2010
    National Jewish Book Awards
© Claudio Sforza
DAVID GROSSMAN was born in Jerusalem. He is the author of numerous works of fiction, nonfiction, and children's literature. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker and has been translated into more than forty languages. He is the recipient of many prizes, including the French Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, the Buxtehuder Bulle in Germany, Rome's Premio per la Pace e l'Azione Umanitaria, the Premio Ischia International Journalism Award, Israel's EMET Prize, the Man Booker International Prize, and the Albatross Prize given by the Günter Grass Foundation. He lives in Jerusalem. View titles by David Grossman

About

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Christian Science Monitor, The Economist, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and The Pittsburgh Post Gazette

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK

Just before his release from service in the Israeli army, Ora’s son Ofer is sent back to the front for a major offensive. In a fit of preemptive grief and magical thinking, so that no bad news can reach her, Ora sets out on an epic hike in the Galilee. She is joined by an unlikely companion—Avram, a former friend and lover with a troubled past—and as they sleep out in the hills, Ora begins to conjure her son. Ofer’s story, as told by Ora, becomes a surprising balm both for her and for Avram—and a mother’s powerful meditation on war and family.

“A masterpiece. . . . One of the few novels that feel as though they have made a difference to the world.” —Colm Tóibín, The New York Times Book Review

“A boundary-pushing novel. . . . Like all great literature, it is an act of generosity, opening itself to every human possibility. . . . Grossman invites us to look beneath the shrill headlines, beyond the roadblocks, within the clenched fist—to see Israel’s predicament not as ‘the situation’ but as many situations, one for every person.” —The Washington Post

“Enthralling. . . . Unsparing yet compassionate . . . Grossman’s electrifying narrative seems excruciatingly timely. . . . Unforgettable. . . . The unstudied beauty and psychological complexity of Grossman’s language, his deft and lively dialogue, are utterly compelling. . . . Rendered in Jessica Cohen’s exquisite translation, Grossman’s symphonic novel straddles despair and hope, a journey into inner and outer landscapes, delivering stunning rewards.” —The Miami Herald

“Magnificent. . . . A powerful meditation. . . . Foremost among Grossman’s achievements is the creation of Ora, a modern-day Scheherazade and icon of the mourning mother.” —The Seattle Times

“Grossman’s greatest fictional creation [is] Ora: tender, passionate, angry, funny, self-doubting, intuitive, above all a woman of ‘abundance.’ . . . [Her story] encompasses both the complex fullness of one life and the broader history of Israel’s modern conflicts. . . . This most Israeli of Grossman’s novels is also his most universal.” —George Packer, The New Yorker

“A tour de force. . . . Unforgettable. . . . [Grossman’s] best.” —The Star-Ledger

“Penetrating. . . . Grossman has produced a sprawling novel that stretches over nearly 35 years of Israeli history. Along with war and peace, life and death, Grossman reckons with the emotional and sexual geometry of Israelis, particularly the secular liberals now in middle age, much like their author.” —Newsday

“This is a story of love and friendship, family and society, parents and children, life and death. And war and peace. . . . Whether lushly descriptive, emotive or narrative, Grossman’s writing is both controlled and passionate. . . . Ora’s voice is authentic and true, honed to perfection.” —Chicago Jewish Star

“Profound. . . . A reminder of what Israel—what any country—is capable of doing to its sons.” —The Boston Globe

“There are some writers in whose words one recognizes the texture of life. David Grossman is such a writer. He is a master of the emotionally accurate and significant. His characters don’t so much lie on the page as rise before the reader’s eyes, in three dimensions, their skin covered in prose that both stabs with insight and shines with compassion.” —Yann Martel, author of Life of Pi

“Moving. . . . A convincing portrait of maternal grit and ingenuity in a time and place of relentless challenge. . . . In this powerful book, there are surprising answers of a kind, but the ongoing strife goes on.” —The Washington Times

“Very rarely you open a book and when you close it again nothing can ever be the same. Walls have been pulled down, barriers broken, a dimension of feeling has opened in you that was not there before. David Grossman has the ability to look inside a person and discover the unique essence of her humanity; his novels are about what it means to defend this essence against a world designed to extinguish it. To the End of the Land is his most powerful, unflinching story of this defense.” —Nicole Krauss, author of The History of Love

“A courageous and powerful antiwar novel.” —Kansas City Star

“Grossman’s most ambitious work to date. . . . His imagination is secular, worldly, self-questioning and ironic. The Israel he imagines, beautifully and sorrowfully, is not going to be saved by any divine intervention.” —The Economist

“Bold and uncompromising, this great emotional rush of a story sings and cries, exults and mourns.” —The Forward

“An extraordinary epic of love, war, and sorrow. . . . Stunning—brilliantly written and beautifully constructed.” —The Times (London)

“A deeply serious, utterly honest work about the state of Israel.” —Financial Times

“Flaubert created his Emma, Tolstoy made his Anna, and now we have Grossman’s Ora—as fully alive, as fully embodied, as any character in recent fiction. I devoured this long novel in a feverish trance.” —Paul Auster, author of Invisible

Excerpt

Prologue, 1967
 
 
HEY, GIRL, quiet!
 
Who is that?
 
Be quiet! You woke everyone up!
 
But I was holding her
 
Who?
 
On the rock, we were sitting together
 
What rock are you talking about? Let us sleep
 
Then she just fell
 
All this shouting and singing
 
But I was asleep
 
And you were shouting!
 
She just let go of my hand and fell
 
Stop it, go to sleep
 
Turn on a light
 
Are you crazy? They’ll kill us if we do that
 
Wait
 
What?
 
I was singing?
 
Singing, shouting, everything. Now be quiet
 
What was I singing?
 
What were you singing?!
 
In my sleep, what was I singing?
 
I’m supposed to know what you were singing? A bunch of shouts.
 
That’s what you were singing. What was I singing, she wants to know . . .
 
You don’t remember the song?
 
Look, are you nuts? I’m barely alive
 
But who are you?
 
Room Three
 
You’re in isolation, too?
 
Gotta get back
 
Don’t go . . . Did you leave? Wait, hello . . . Gone . . . But what was I singing?
 
 
AND the next night he woke her up again, angry at her again for singing at the top of her lungs and waking up the whole hospital, and she begged him to try to remember if it was the same song from the night before. She was desperate to know, because of her dream, which kept getting dreamed almost every night during those years. An utterly white dream. Everything in it was white, the streets and the houses and the trees and the cats and dogs and the rock at the edge of the cliff. And Ada, her redheaded friend, was also entirely white, without a drop of blood in her face or body. Without a drop of color in her hair. But he couldn’t remember which song it was this time, either. His whole body was shuddering, and she shuddered back at him from her bed. We’re like a pair of castanets, he said, and to her surprise, she burst out with bright laughter that tickled him inside. He had used up all his strength on the journey from his room to hers, thirty-five steps, resting after each one, holding on to walls, doorframes, empty food carts. Now he flopped onto the sticky linoleum floor in her doorway. For several minutes they both breathed heavily. He wanted to make her laugh again but he could no longer speak, and then he must have fallen asleep, until her voice woke him.
 
Tell me something
 
What? Who is it?
 
It’s me
 
You . . .
 
Tell me, am I alone in this room?
 
How should I know?
 
Are you, like, shivering?
 
Yeah, shivering
 
How high is yours?
 
It was forty this evening
 
Mine was forty point three. When do you die?
 
At forty-two
 
That’s close
 
No, no, you still have time
 
Don’t go, I’m scared
 
Do you hear?
 
What?
 
How quiet it is suddenly?
 
Were there booms before?
 
Cannons
 
I keep sleeping, and all of a sudden it’s nighttime again
 
’Cause there’s a blackout
 
I think they’re winning
 
Who?
 
The Arabs
 
No way
 
They’ve occupied Tel Aviv
 
What are you . . . who told you that?
 
I don’t know. Maybe I heard it
 
You dreamed it
 
No, they said it here, someone, before, I heard voices
 
It’s from the fever. Nightmares. I have them, too
 
My dream . . . I was with my friend
 
Maybe you know
 
What?
 
Which direction I came from
 
I don’t know anything here
 
How long for you?
 
Don’t know
 
Me, four days. Maybe a week
 
Wait, where’s the nurse?
 
At night she’s in Internal A. She’s an Arab
 
How do you know?
 
You can hear it when she talks
 
You’re shaking
 
My mouth, my whole face
 
But . . . where is everybody?
 
They’re not taking us to the bomb shelter
 
Why?
 
So we don’t infect them
 
Wait, so it’s just us—
 
And the nurse
 
I thought
 
What?
 
If you could sing it for me
 
That again?
 
Just hum
 
I’m leaving
 
If it was the other way around, I would sing to you
 
Gotta get back
 
Where?
 
Where, where, to lie with my forefathers, to bring me down with sorrow to the grave, that’s where
 
What? What was that? Wait, do I know you? Hey, come back
 
 
AND the next night, too, before midnight, he came to stand in her doorway and scolded her again and complained that she was singing in her sleep, waking him and the whole world, and she smiled to herself and asked if his room was really that far, and that was when he realized, from her voice, that she wasn’t where she had been the night before and the night before that.
 
Because now I’m sitting, she explained. He asked cautiously, But why are you sitting? Because I couldn’t sleep, she said. And I wasn’t singing. I was sitting here quietly waiting for you.
 
They both thought it was getting even darker. A new wave of heat, which may have had nothing to do with her illness, climbed up from Ora’s toes and sparked red spots on her neck and face. It’s a good thing it’s dark, she thought, and held her loose pajama collar up to her neck. Finally, from the doorway, he cleared his throat softly and said, Well, I have to get back. But why? she asked. He said he urgently had to tar and feather himself. She didn’t get it, but then she got it and laughed deeply. Come on, dummy, enough with your act, I put a chair out for you next to me.
 
He felt along the doorway, metal cabinets, and beds, until he stopped way off, leaned his arms on an empty bed, and panted loudly. I’m here, he groaned. Come closer to me, she said. Wait, let me catch my breath. The darkness filled her with courage and she said in a loud voice, in her voice of health, of beaches and paddleball and swimming out to the rafts on Quiet Beach, What are you afraid of? I don’t bite. He mumbled, Okay, okay, I get it, I’m barely alive. His grumbling tone and the heavy way he dragged his feet touched her. We’re kind of like an elderly couple, she thought.
 
Ouch!
 
What happened?
 
One of these beds just decided to . . . Fuck! So, have you heard of the Law of Malicious—
 
What did you say?
 
The Law of Malicious Furniture—heard of it?
 
Are you coming or not?
 
The trembling wouldn’t stop, and sometimes it turned into long shivers, and when they talked their speech was choppy, and they often had to wait for a pause in the trembling, a brief calming of the face and mouth muscles, and then they would quickly spit out the words in high, tense voices, and the stammering crushed the sentences in their mouths. How-old-are-you? Six-teen-and-you? And-a-quar-ter. I-have-jaun-dice, how-a-bout-you? Me? he said. I-think-it’s-an-in-fec-tion-of-the-o-va-ries.
 
Silence. He shuddered and breathed heavily. By-the-way-that-was-a-joke, he said. Not funny, she said. He groaned: I tried to make her laugh, but her sense of humor is too— She perked up and asked who he was talking to. He replied, To my joke writer, I guess I’ll have to fire him. If you don’t come over here and sit down right now, I’ll start singing, she threatened. He shivered and laughed. His laughter was as screechy as a donkey’s bray, a self-sustaining laughter, and she secretly gulped it down like medicine, like a prize.
 
He laughed so hard at her stupid little joke that she barely resisted telling him that lately she wasn’t good at making people roll around with laughter the way she used to. “When it comes to humor, she’s not much of a jester,” they sang about her at the Purim party this year. And it wasn’t just a minor shortcoming. For her it was crippling, a new defect that could grow bigger and more complicated. And she sensed that it was somehow related to some other qualities that were vanishing in recent years. Intuition, for example. How could a trait like that disappear so abruptly? Or the knack for saying the right thing at the right time. She had had it once, and now it was gone. Or even just wittiness. She used to be really sharp. The sparks just flew out of her. (Although, she consoled herself, it was a Purim song, and maybe they just couldn’t come up with a better rhyme for “Esther.”) Or her sense of love, she thought. Maybe that was part of her deterioration—her losing the capacity to really love someone, to burn with love, like the girls talked about, like in the movies. She felt a pang for Asher Feinblatt, her friend who went to the military boarding school, who was now a soldier, who had told her on the steps between Pevsner Street and Yosef Street that she was his soul mate, but who hadn’t touched her that time, either. Never once in two years had he put a hand or a finger on her, and maybe that never-touched-her also had something to do with it, and deep in her heart she felt that everything was somehow connected, and that things would grow clearer all the time, and she would keep discovering more little pieces of whatever awaited her.
 
For a moment she could see herself at fifty, tall and thin and withered, a scentless flower taking long, quick steps, her head bowed, a wide-brimmed straw hat hiding her face. The boy with the donkey laugh kept feeling his way toward her, getting closer and then farther away—it was as if he were doing it on purpose, she realized, like this was a kind of game for him—and he giggled and made fun of his own clumsiness and floated around the room in circles, and every so often he asked her to say something so he’d know which direction she was in: Like a lighthouse, he explained, but with sound. Smart-ass, she thought. He finally reached her bed and felt around and found the chair she had put out, and collapsed on it and breathed heavily like an old man. She could smell the sweat of his illness, and she pulled off one of her blankets and gave it to him and he wrapped it around himself and said nothing. They were both exhausted, and each of them shivered and moaned.
 
Still, she said later from under her blanket, your voice sounds familiar. Where are you from? Jerusalem, he said. I’m from Haifa, she said, accentuating slightly. They brought me here in an ambulance from Rambam Hospital, because of the complications. I have those too, he laughed, my whole life is complications. They sat quietly. He scratched his stomach and chest and grumbled, and she grumbled, too. That’s the worse thing about it, isn’t it? she said. She also scratched herself, with all ten fingernails. Sometimes I’m dying to peel all my skin off, just to make it stop. Every time she started talking, he could hear the soft sticky sound of her lips parting, and the tips of his fingers and toes throbbed.
 
Ora said, The ambulance driver said that at a time like this they need the ambulances for more important things.
 
Have you noticed that everyone here is angry at us? As if we purposely. . .
 
Because we’re the last ones left from the plague.
 
They sent home anyone who was feeling even a little bit better. Especially soldiers. Wham-bam, they kicked them right back to the army so they could make it in time for the war.
 
So there’s really going to be a war?
 
Are you kidding? There’s been a war for at least two days.
 
When did it start? she asked in a whisper.
 
Day before yesterday, I think. And I told you that already, yesterday or the day before, I can’t remember, the days get mixed up.
 
That’s right, you did say . . . Ora was dumbstruck. Clots of strange and terrifying dreams drifted through her.
 
How could you not hear? he murmured. There are sirens and artillery all the time, and I heard helicopters landing. There are probably a million casualties by now.
 
But what’s going on?
 
I don’t know, and there’s no one to talk to here. They have no patience for us.
 
Then who’s taking care of us?
 
Right now there’s just that thin little Arab woman, the one who cries. Have you heard her?
 
That’s a person crying? Ora was stunned. I thought it was an animal wailing. Are you sure?
 
It’s a person, for sure.
 
But how come I haven’t seen her?
 
She kind of comes and goes. She does the tests and leaves your medicine and food on a tray. It’s just her now, day and night. He sucked in his cheeks and said thoughtfully, It’s funny that the only person they left us with is an Arab, isn’t it? They probably don’t let Arabs treat the wounded.
 
But why does she cry? What happened to her?
 
How should I know?
 
Ora sat up straight and her body hardened, and she said coldly, quietly, They’ve occupied Tel Aviv, I’m telling you. Nasser and Hussein are already sipping coffee at a café on Dizengoff Street.
 
Where did you come up with that? He sounded frightened.
 
I heard it last night, or today, I’m almost positive, maybe it was on her radio, I heard it, they’ve occupied Beersheba and Ashkelon and Tel Aviv.
 
No, no, that can’t be. Maybe it’s the fever, it’s because of your fever, ’cause there’s no way! You’re crazy, there’s no way they’ll win.
 
There is, there is, she mumbled to herself, and thought, What do you even know about what could or couldn’t happen.
Copyright © 2010 by David Grossman, Translated by Jessica Cohen. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Awards

  • WINNER | 2010
    National Jewish Book Awards
  • WINNER | 2010
    National Jewish Book Awards
  • WINNER | 2010
    National Jewish Book Awards

Author

© Claudio Sforza
DAVID GROSSMAN was born in Jerusalem. He is the author of numerous works of fiction, nonfiction, and children's literature. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker and has been translated into more than forty languages. He is the recipient of many prizes, including the French Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, the Buxtehuder Bulle in Germany, Rome's Premio per la Pace e l'Azione Umanitaria, the Premio Ischia International Journalism Award, Israel's EMET Prize, the Man Booker International Prize, and the Albatross Prize given by the Günter Grass Foundation. He lives in Jerusalem. View titles by David Grossman

Additional formats

  • To the End of the Land
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    David Grossman
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    David Grossman
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    Vintage
    Jul 01, 2014
  • Beer in the Snooker Club
    Beer in the Snooker Club
    Waguih Ghali
    978-0-8041-7074-1
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Jun 10, 2014
  • Subtle Bodies
    Subtle Bodies
    Norman Rush
    978-1-4000-7713-7
    $15.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Jun 03, 2014
  • Going Home Again
    Going Home Again
    Dennis Bock
    978-1-4000-9610-7
    $15.95 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    May 06, 2014
  • The Infatuations
    The Infatuations
    Javier Marías
    978-0-307-95073-4
    $15.95 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Apr 22, 2014
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    Vintage Munro
    Nobel Prize Edition
    Alice Munro
    978-0-8041-7356-8
    $12.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Apr 22, 2014
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    Bombay Stories
    Saadat Hasan Manto
    978-0-8041-7060-4
    $16.95 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Mar 25, 2014
  • Paradise
    Paradise
    Toni Morrison
    978-0-8041-6988-2
    $17.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Mar 11, 2014
  • The Blind Man's Garden
    The Blind Man's Garden
    Nadeem Aslam
    978-0-345-80285-9
    $16.95 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Jan 28, 2014
  • All That Is
    All That Is
    A Novel
    James Salter
    978-1-4000-7842-4
    $16.95 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Jan 28, 2014
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    The Tragedy of Mister Morn
    Vladimir Nabokov
    978-0-307-95066-6
    $15.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Dec 03, 2013
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    Beyond the Rainbow
    Yasunari Kawabata
    978-0-593-31492-0
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Apr 04, 2023
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    Medusa's Ankles
    Selected Stories
    A. S. Byatt
    978-0-593-46685-8
    $18.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Sep 06, 2022
  • Out (Special Edition)
    Out (Special Edition)
    Natsuo Kirino
    978-0-593-31195-0
    $18.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage Crime/Black Lizard
    Aug 09, 2022
  • More Than I Love My Life
    More Than I Love My Life
    A novel
    David Grossman
    978-0-593-31259-9
    $17.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Jul 12, 2022
  • The Living Sea of Waking Dreams
    The Living Sea of Waking Dreams
    A novel
    Richard Flanagan
    978-0-593-31370-1
    $17.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Apr 26, 2022
  • Trio
    Trio
    A novel
    William Boyd
    978-0-593-31146-2
    $17.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Mar 08, 2022
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    Klara and the Sun
    A novel
    Kazuo Ishiguro
    978-0-593-31129-5
    $16.95 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Mar 01, 2022
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    Antiquities and Other Stories
    Cynthia Ozick
    978-0-593-31276-6
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
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    Inside Story
    A novel
    Martin Amis
    978-0-593-31171-4
    $18.00 US
    Paperback
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    Feb 22, 2022
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    Let Me Tell You What I Mean
    Joan Didion
    978-0-593-31219-3
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
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    Palimpsest
    A Memoir
    Gore Vidal
    978-0-593-31439-5
    $18.00 US
    Paperback
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    Season of Anomy
    Wole Soyinka
    978-0-593-46719-0
    $16.95 US
    Paperback
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    The Interpreters
    Wole Soyinka
    978-0-593-46721-3
    $16.95 US
    Paperback
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    Here We Are
    A novel
    Graham Swift
    978-1-9848-9952-1
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
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    Juneteenth (Revised)
    Ralph Ellison
    978-0-593-31461-6
    $17.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    May 18, 2021
  • Think, Write, Speak
    Think, Write, Speak
    Uncollected Essays, Reviews, Interviews, and Letters to the Editor
    Brian Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov Literary Trust
    978-1-101-87370-0
    $18.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Feb 09, 2021
  • The Wapshot Chronicle
    The Wapshot Chronicle
    John Cheever
    978-0-593-08177-8
    $16.95 US
    Paperback
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    The Wapshot Scandal
    John Cheever
    978-0-593-31289-6
    $16.95 US
    Paperback
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  • Love in the Time of Cholera (Illustrated Edition)
    Love in the Time of Cholera (Illustrated Edition)
    Gabriel García Márquez
    978-0-593-31085-4
    $25.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Oct 27, 2020
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    The Scandal of the Century
    And Other Writings
    Gabriel García Márquez
    978-0-525-56680-9
    $16.95 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Sep 15, 2020
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    Personal Writings
    Albert Camus
    978-0-525-56721-9
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
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    Aug 04, 2020
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    Berta Isla
    A novel
    Javier Marías
    978-0-525-56312-9
    $17.00 US
    Paperback
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    Jul 07, 2020
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    Life for Sale
    Yukio Mishima
    978-0-525-56514-7
    $16.95 US
    Paperback
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    The Source of Self-Regard
    Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations
    Toni Morrison
    978-0-525-56279-5
    $16.95 US
    Paperback
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    Jan 14, 2020
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    Love Is Blind
    A novel
    William Boyd
    978-0-525-56444-7
    $16.95 US
    Paperback
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    So Much Life Left Over
    A Novel
    Louis de Bernieres
    978-0-525-56441-6
    $16.95 US
    Paperback
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    Jul 09, 2019
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    Myra Breckinridge
    Gore Vidal
    978-0-525-56650-2
    $18.00 US
    Paperback
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    May 21, 2019
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    Warlight
    Michael Ondaatje
    978-0-525-56296-2
    $16.95 US
    Paperback
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    Apr 02, 2019
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    First Person
    Richard Flanagan
    978-0-525-43577-8
    $17.00 US
    Paperback
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    Mar 05, 2019
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    The Only Story
    A novel
    Julian Barnes
    978-0-525-56306-8
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
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    Mar 05, 2019
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    A Long Way from Home
    Peter Carey
    978-0-525-43599-0
    $16.95 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Feb 05, 2019
  • The Rub of Time
    The Rub of Time
    Bellow, Nabokov, Hitchens, Travolta, Trump: Essays and Reportage, 1994-2017
    Martin Amis
    978-1-4000-9599-5
    $16.95 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Jan 22, 2019
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    I'm Not Here to Give a Speech
    Gabriel García Márquez
    978-1-101-91118-1
    $14.95 US
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    Vintage
    Jan 08, 2019
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    The Frolic of the Beasts
    Yukio Mishima
    978-0-525-43415-3
    $15.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Nov 27, 2018
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    The Myth of Sisyphus
    Albert Camus
    978-0-525-56445-4
    $15.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Nov 06, 2018
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    Dinner at the Center of the Earth
    Nathan Englander
    978-0-525-43404-7
    $16.95 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Sep 04, 2018
  • Between Eternities
    Between Eternities
    And Other Writings
    Javier Marías
    978-1-101-97211-3
    $15.95 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Aug 28, 2018
  • A Boy in Winter
    A Boy in Winter
    A Novel
    Rachel Seiffert
    978-0-8041-6880-9
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Jul 10, 2018
  • The Red-Haired Woman
    The Red-Haired Woman
    Orhan Pamuk
    978-1-101-97423-0
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Jul 10, 2018
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    Men Without Women
    Stories
    Haruki Murakami
    978-1-101-97452-0
    $16.95 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    May 01, 2018
  • The Golden Legend
    The Golden Legend
    A novel
    Nadeem Aslam
    978-1-101-97338-7
    $17.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Apr 24, 2018
  • The Woman on the Stairs
    The Woman on the Stairs
    A Novel
    Bernhard Schlink
    978-1-101-91234-8
    $16.95 US
    Paperback
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    Feb 20, 2018
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    A Horse Walks Into a Bar
    A novel
    David Grossman
    978-1-101-97349-3
    $15.95 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Jan 16, 2018
  • South and West
    South and West
    From a Notebook
    Joan Didion
    978-0-525-43419-1
    $15.00 US
    Paperback
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    Jan 02, 2018
  • Letters to Véra
    Letters to Véra
    Vladimir Nabokov
    978-0-307-47658-6
    $22.00 US
    Paperback
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    Dec 12, 2017
  • House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories
    House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories
    Yasunari Kawabata
    978-0-525-43414-6
    $9.99 US
    Ebook
    Vintage
    Dec 12, 2017
  • The Boat Rocker
    The Boat Rocker
    A Novel
    Ha Jin
    978-0-8041-7037-6
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
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    Oct 17, 2017
  • Absolutely on Music
    Absolutely on Music
    Conversations
    Haruki Murakami, Seiji Ozawa
    978-0-8041-7372-8
    $18.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Oct 03, 2017
  • The Spy
    The Spy
    A Novel of Mata Hari
    Paulo Coelho
    978-0-525-43279-1
    $16.95 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Jun 27, 2017
  • Keeping an Eye Open
    Keeping an Eye Open
    Essays on Art
    Julian Barnes
    978-1-101-87337-3
    $20.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Jun 13, 2017
  • The Noise of Time
    The Noise of Time
    A Novel
    Julian Barnes
    978-1-101-97118-5
    $17.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Jun 13, 2017
  • I Am Not Your Negro
    I Am Not Your Negro
    A Companion Edition to the Documentary Film Directed by Raoul Peck
    James Baldwin, Raoul Peck
    978-0-525-43469-6
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Feb 07, 2017
  • A Decent Ride
    A Decent Ride
    Irvine Welsh
    978-1-101-97084-3
    $16.95 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Jan 10, 2017
  • Mothering Sunday
    Mothering Sunday
    A Romance
    Graham Swift
    978-1-101-97172-7
    $15.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Jan 10, 2017
  • Julieta (Movie Tie-in Edition)
    Julieta (Movie Tie-in Edition)
    Three Stories That Inspired the Movie
    Alice Munro
    978-0-525-43426-9
    $9.99 US
    Ebook
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    Dec 13, 2016
  • Notwithstanding
    Notwithstanding
    Louis de Bernieres
    978-1-101-96987-8
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Oct 18, 2016
  • A Strangeness in My Mind
    A Strangeness in My Mind
    A novel
    Orhan Pamuk
    978-0-307-74484-5
    $17.95 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Sep 20, 2016
  • The Blue Guitar
    The Blue Guitar
    John Banville
    978-0-8041-7361-2
    $17.00 US
    Paperback
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    Aug 09, 2016
  • The Dust That Falls from Dreams
    The Dust That Falls from Dreams
    A Novel
    Louis de Bernieres
    978-1-101-97000-3
    $17.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Jul 26, 2016
  • Wind/Pinball
    Wind/Pinball
    Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973 (Two Novels)
    Haruki Murakami
    978-0-8041-7014-7
    $17.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    May 03, 2016
  • England and Other Stories
    England and Other Stories
    Graham Swift
    978-1-101-87238-3
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Apr 19, 2016
  • Odysseus Abroad
    Odysseus Abroad
    A novel
    Amit Chaudhuri
    978-1-101-97145-1
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Feb 09, 2016
  • God Help the Child
    God Help the Child
    Toni Morrison
    978-0-307-74092-2
    $14.95 US
    Paperback
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    Jan 26, 2016
  • The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins
    The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins
    Irvine Welsh
    978-0-8041-7321-6
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Jan 12, 2016
  • The Buried Giant
    The Buried Giant
    Kazuo Ishiguro
    978-0-307-45579-6
    $17.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Jan 05, 2016
  • Amnesia
    Amnesia
    Peter Carey
    978-0-8041-7132-8
    $15.95 US
    Paperback
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    Dec 08, 2015
  • Family Furnishings
    Family Furnishings
    Selected Stories, 1995-2014
    Alice Munro
    978-1-101-87235-2
    $18.95 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Sep 15, 2015
  • A Wilderness Station
    A Wilderness Station
    Selected Stories, 1968-1994
    Alice Munro
    978-1-101-97036-2
    $16.95 US
    Paperback
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    Sep 15, 2015
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    The Prophet
    Kahlil Gibran
    978-1-101-97078-2
    $9.95 US
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    A Map of Betrayal
    A Novel
    Ha Jin
    978-0-8041-7036-9
    $15.95 US
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    Jul 07, 2015
  • The Zone of Interest
    The Zone of Interest
    Martin Amis
    978-0-8041-7289-9
    $15.95 US
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    Jul 07, 2015
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    The Walk Home
    A Novel
    Rachel Seiffert
    978-1-101-87343-4
    $16.95 US
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    Jun 23, 2015
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    Adultery
    Paulo Coelho
    978-1-101-87224-6
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
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    May 26, 2015
  • Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
    Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
    Haruki Murakami
    978-0-8041-7012-3
    $16.95 US
    Paperback
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    May 05, 2015
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    The Narrow Road to the Deep North
    Richard Flanagan
    978-0-8041-7147-2
    $16.95 US
    Paperback
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    Apr 14, 2015
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    The Fires of Autumn
    Irene Nemirovsky
    978-1-101-87227-7
    $15.00 US
    Paperback
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    Mar 17, 2015
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    The News: A User's Manual
    Alain De Botton
    978-0-307-47683-8
    $17.00 US
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    Dec 02, 2014
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    Falling Out of Time
    David Grossman
    978-0-345-80585-0
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
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    Dec 02, 2014
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    The Man of Feeling
    Javier Marías
    978-0-8041-7259-2
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
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    Oct 07, 2014
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    Levels of Life
    Julian Barnes
    978-0-345-80658-1
    $15.95 US
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    Jul 01, 2014
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    Beer in the Snooker Club
    Waguih Ghali
    978-0-8041-7074-1
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Jun 10, 2014
  • Subtle Bodies
    Subtle Bodies
    Norman Rush
    978-1-4000-7713-7
    $15.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Jun 03, 2014
  • Going Home Again
    Going Home Again
    Dennis Bock
    978-1-4000-9610-7
    $15.95 US
    Paperback
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    May 06, 2014
  • The Infatuations
    The Infatuations
    Javier Marías
    978-0-307-95073-4
    $15.95 US
    Paperback
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    Apr 22, 2014
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    Vintage Munro
    Nobel Prize Edition
    Alice Munro
    978-0-8041-7356-8
    $12.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Apr 22, 2014
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    Bombay Stories
    Saadat Hasan Manto
    978-0-8041-7060-4
    $16.95 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Mar 25, 2014
  • Paradise
    Paradise
    Toni Morrison
    978-0-8041-6988-2
    $17.00 US
    Paperback
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    Mar 11, 2014
  • The Blind Man's Garden
    The Blind Man's Garden
    Nadeem Aslam
    978-0-345-80285-9
    $16.95 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Jan 28, 2014
  • All That Is
    All That Is
    A Novel
    James Salter
    978-1-4000-7842-4
    $16.95 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Jan 28, 2014
  • The Tragedy of Mister Morn
    The Tragedy of Mister Morn
    Vladimir Nabokov
    978-0-307-95066-6
    $15.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Dec 03, 2013
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Humanities & Social Sciences
February 27 2018

David Grossman has been awarded the 2018 Israel Prize for Literature

Israel’s Education Ministry announced that celebrated author, David Grossman, has been awarded the Israel Prize—the country’s highest literary accolade—for this year.   The prize committee, led by Prof. Avner Holtzman, noted that “since the early ’80s, Grossman has taken center stage in the Israeli culture scene. He is one of the most profound, moving and influential

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David Grossman has been awarded the 2018 Israel Prize for Literature

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