Writing in the Dark
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- €12.99
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- €12.99
Publisher Description
Essays on politics and literature from one of world literature's most respected voices.
'The bravest and most clear-headed interpreter of the Israeli-Palestinian divide' Observer
'The most honest, soul-searching book yet written by an Israeli - or, for that matter, by a Palestinian - on an agony that neither of them alone can bring to an end' L.A. Times
Throughout his career, David Grossman has been a voice for peace and reconciliation between Israel and its Arab citizens and neighbours. In five new essays on politics and literature in Israel today, he addresses the conscience of a country that has lost faith in its leaders and its ideals.
This collection includes an already-famous speech that Grossman delivered in the presence of Ehud Olmert, attacking Olmert's policies and his prosecution of Israel's disastrous Lebanon war in 2006, the war that took the life of Grossman's 20-year-old son Uri.
Moving, humane, clear-sighted, and courageous, these essays on literature and the Holocaust, and artistic creation as well as politics and philosophy are a cri de coeur from a calm voice of reason at a time of uncertainty and despair.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Peace activist and vocal advocate for "relinquishing the Territories and ending the Occupation," Israeli novelist Grossman is unafraid of controversy; these six essays, however, address these concerns more obliquely, through the lens of literature. "Books That Have Read Me" merges the young reader's discovery that "books are the place in the world where both the thing and the loss of it can be contained" with the older writer's urge "to describe contemporary political reality in a language that is not the public, general, nationalized idiom." Grossman's passions are two an Israel at peace with its neighbors and a citizenry restored to dignity through the individual language of literature, which "can bring us together with the fate of those who are distant and foreign." Grossman lays claim to an "acquired na vet " in his hopefulness; how welcome and enlightening it is.
