To The End of the Land Book

Ora a middle-aged mother is on the verge of celebrating her son Ofer's release from Israeli army service when he returns to the front for a major offensive. In a fit of preemptive grief and magical thinking she sets out for a hike in the Galilee leaving no forwarding information for the 'notifiers' who might darken her door with the worst possible news. Recently estranged from her husband Ilan she drags along an unlikely companion: their former best friend and her former lover Avram once a brilliant artistic spirit. Avram served in the army alongside Ilan when they were young but their lives were forever changed one weekend when the two jokingly had Ora draw lots to see which of them would get the few days' leave being offered by their commander - a chance act that sent Avram into Egypt and the Yom Kippur War where he was brutally tortured as a POW. In the aftermath a virtual hermit he refused to keep in touch with the family and has never met the boy.Now as Ora and Avram sleep out in the hills ford rivers and cross valleys avoiding all news from the front she gives him the gift of Ofer word by word; she supplies the whole story of her motherhood a retelling that keeps Ofer very much alive for Ora and for the reader and opens Avram to human bonds undreamed of in his broken world. Grossman's rich imagining of a family in love and crisis makes for one of the great antiwar novels of our time.

Ora, a middle-aged Israeli mother, is about to celebrate her son Ofer's release from army service when he returns to the front for a major offensive. Instead of waiting at home for the 'notifiers' who could arrive at any moment to tell her of her son's fate, she sets off for a hike in Galilee, leaving no forwarding address. If a mother is not there to receive the news, a son cannot die, can he?Recently estranged from her husband, Ora drags along an unlikely companion: their former best friend and her former lover Avram, the man who in fact turns out to be her son's biological father. As they sleep out in the hills, ford rivers and cross valleys, Ora recounts, step by step and word by word, the story of her son's birth, life and possible death, in one mother's magical, passionate and heartbreaking attempt to keep her son safe from harm.