To the End of the Land

Last updated
To the End of the Land
ToTheEndOfTheLandCover.jpg
AuthorDavid Grossman
Original titleאשה בורחת מבשורה
Translator Jessica Cohen
CountryIsrael
Language Hebrew
Genre anti-war novel, literary fiction
PublisherHaKibbutz HaMeuchad Publishing House, Ltd (1st edition)
Publication date
2008 (1st edition)
Published in English
21 September 2010 (1st American edition)
Media typePrint (Hardcover)
Pages592 (Hardcover, 1st American edition)
ISBN 978-0-307-59297-2
OCLC 495781119

To the End of the Land (original Hebrew title "Isha Borachat Mi’bsora" "A Woman Flees a Message") is a 2008 novel by Israeli writer David Grossman depicting the emotional strains that family members of soldiers experience when their loved ones are deployed into combat. Grossman began writing the novel in May 2003 when his oldest son Yonatan was serving in the Israeli Defense Forces and the book was largely completed by August 2006 when his younger son Uri was killed in the Second Lebanon War. [1]

Contents

Originally written in Hebrew, an English translation by Jessica Cohen was published in September 2010 to widespread critical acclaim. Translation of this work presented a considerable challenge to the translator, as the original includes numerous Hebrew puns as well as quotations from and allusions to the Hebrew Bible as well as works of modern Hebrew literature.

Plot synopsis

Ora, a recently divorced Jerusalemite physiotherapist in her early fifties, had anxiously waited for her son Ofer to get through his three years' term of military service spent mainly in confronting and skirmishing with the rebellious Palestinians of the Second Intifada. However, just as she prepares to mark Ofer's safe return by going off with him to a long-planned week of backpacking in the Galilee, the West Bank situation sharply escalates and the Israeli Army launches an all-out invasion ("Operation Defensive Shield" of April 2002). To Ora's great dismay, Ofer volunteers to rejoin his unit. Taking him in a taxi to the base camp, Ora is filled with apprehension that Ofer is going to get killed, and compares herself to the Biblical Abraham who took his son off to be slaughtered. Back in her empty home, she is haunted by unbearable visions of army officers knocking on her door and bringing the message of Ofer's death in action, and at a moment's notice she runs off "To the End of the Land".

Ora's wanderings and trekking through the Israeli countryside make up the bulk of the book's plot. She refuses to listen to news broadcasts or read papers, but cannot help noticing monuments of old battles and the inscribed names of dead soldiers. Interspersed with Ora's various experiences surrealistic, nightmarish and sometimes humorous are memories of previous events in her life, love relationships and motherhood, and the way it was impacted by earlier wars and conflicts in Israel's history.

The story moves back and forth in time with extensive flashbacks, going back to the 1967 Six Day War when the teenager Ora was confined to a hospital isolation ward where she met two boys, Avram and Ilan, fell in love with both of them and entered into a very complicated, lifelong love triangle. It would be Avram who would eventually father Ofer, while Ilan would become Ora's husband, lovingly raising this son. Avram would become terribly traumatized after undergoing torture as a prisoner of war in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and cut himself off from her and from his son despite, or precisely because of, caring greatly. But at the ultimate crisis in the story's present moment, Avram would reappear to share Ora's desperate quest.

Reception

To the End of the Land was nominated for the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction [2] and won the 2011 JQ Wingate Prize. [3] The novel's French translation, Une femme fuyant l'annonce, won the 2011 Prix Médicis étranger award for the best book published that year in translation. [4] In August 2011 it was among the books which U.S. President Barack Obama took with him on vacation. [5]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amos Oz</span> Israeli writer, novelist, journalist and intellectual

Amos Oz was an Israeli writer, novelist, journalist, and intellectual. He was also a professor of Hebrew literature at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. From 1967 onwards, Oz was a prominent advocate of a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dahlia Ravikovitch</span> Israeli poet, translator and peace activist

Dahlia Ravikovitch was an Israeli poet, translator, and peace activist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">A. B. Yehoshua</span> Israeli novelist, essayist, and playwright (1936–2022)

Avraham Gabriel Yehoshua was an Israeli novelist, essayist, and playwright. The New York Times called him the "Israeli Faulkner". Underlying themes in Yehoshua's work are Jewish identity, the tense relations with non-Jews, the conflict between the older and younger generations, and the clash between religion and politics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Grossman</span> Israeli author

David Grossman is an Israeli author. His books have been translated into more than 30 languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Bar-Zohar</span> Israeli politician

Michael Bar-Zohar is an Israeli historian, novelist and politician. He was a member of the Knesset on behalf of the Alignment and Labor Party in the 1980s and early 1990s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Agi Mishol</span> Israeli poet (born 1947)

Agi Mishol is an Israeli poet. Considered by many to be one of Israel's most prominent and popular poets, Mishol's work has been published in several languages, and has won various awards including the Zbigniew Herbert International Literary Award and the Yehuda Amichai prize for literature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amos Kenan</span> Israeli writer, journalist and artist (1927–2009)

Amos Kenan, also Amos Keinan, was an Israeli columnist, painter, sculptor, playwright and novelist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rutu Modan</span> Israeli illustrator and comic book artist

Rutu Modan is an Israeli illustrator and comic book artist. She is co-founder of the Israeli comics group Actus Tragicus and published the graphic novels Exit Wounds (2007) and The Property (2013).

The Sapir Prize for Literature of Israel is a prestigious annual literary award presented for a work of literature in the Hebrew language. The prize is awarded by Mifal HaPayis, and is a part of the organization's cultural initiatives. It bears the name of the late Pinhas Sapir, a former Finance Minister of Israel, and was first awarded in 2000.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Naomi Ragen</span>

Naomi Ragen is an American-Israeli modern-Orthodox Jewish author and playwright. Ragen lives in Jerusalem, and writes in English. A recurring theme in her fictional works is injustice against women in the Haredi Jewish community. Ragen has been the subject of various lawsuits over claims of plagiarism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shlomo Sand</span> Israeli historian and academic

Shlomo Sand is an Israeli Emeritus Professor of History at Tel Aviv University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rona Kenan</span> Israeli singer-songwriter

Rona (Aharona) Rachel Kenan is an Israeli singer-songwriter.

The Bernstein Prize is an annual Israeli literary award for writers 50 years of age and younger. The prize is awarded by the Bernstein Foundation, named after Mordechai Bernstein, who left money in his estate to establish a foundation in order to encourage young Hebrew writers. The foundation is managed by Book Publishers Association of Israel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fania Oz-Salzberger</span> Israeli historian and writer

Fania Oz-Salzberger is an Israeli historian and writer, Professor Emerita of history at the University of Haifa School of Law and the Haifa Center for German and European Studies (HCGES).

<i>Second Person Singular</i> Novel by Sayed Kashua

Second Person Singular is a 2010 novel by the Arab Israeli writer Sayed Kashua. Kashua explores the identity of Arabs who are assimilated in Israeli culture; Arabs that speak Hebrew and had their education at Israeli institutes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ari Shavit</span> Israeli journalist

Ari Shavit is an Israeli reporter and writer. Shavit was a senior correspondent at the left-of-center Israeli newspaper Haaretz before he resigned when a pattern of sexual misconduct came to public attention.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dorit Rabinyan</span> Israeli writer and screenwriter

Dorit Rabinyan is an Israeli writer and screenwriter.

Jessica Cohen is a British-Israeli-American literary translator. Her translation of David Grossman's 2014 novel A Horse Walks Into a Bar was awarded the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shin Shifra</span> Israeli writer

Shin Shifra ; is the pen name of Shifra Shifman Shmuelevitch, a poet, translator, writer, editor and literary academic. Shifra won multiple literature awards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yaniv Iczkovits</span> Israeli writer (born 1975)

Yaniv Iczkovits is an Israeli writer known for his novels, essays and philosophical work. His 2015 fantasy-historical adventure novel The Slaughterman's Daughter, with an unlikely assortment of Jewish characters on a quest in late 19th century Czarist Russia, has been translated into several European languages and gained critical acclaim.

References

  1. Packer, George (27 September 2010). "The Unconsoled: A writer's tragedy, and a nation's". The New Yorker. Retrieved 1 February 2011.
  2. Sela, Maya (31 January 2011). "Israeli writers named finalists in top U.S. book award". Haaretz. Retrieved 1 February 2011.
  3. Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize 2011 Archived 2012-02-25 at the Wayback Machine
  4. Sela, Maya (11 June 2011). "News in Brief". Haaretz. Retrieved 7 January 2012.
  5. Slack, Donovan (20 August 2011). "Obama plans lots of reading". The Boston Globe. Retrieved 7 January 2012.