Grossman, David 1954-

PERSONAL: Born January 25, 1954, in Jerusalem, Israel; son of Yitzhak and Michaela Grossman; married Michal (a psychologist); children: Yonatan and Uri (deceased, 2006). Education: Hebrew University, B.A., 1976. Religion: Jewish.

ADDRESSES: Home—Mevaseret Zion, Israel. Agent—Deborah Harris, The Harris/Elon Agency, P.O. Box 4143, Jerusalem 91041, Israel.

CAREER: Writer. Worked as a journalist for Kol Israel (Israeli Radio).

AWARDS, HONORS: Ministry of Education Prize for Children’s Literature (Israel), 1983, for Du-krav; Prime Minister’s Prize for Hebrew literature, 1984; Israeli Publishers Association Prize for best novel, 1985, for Hiyukh ha-gedi; Vallombrosa Prize (Italy), 1989; Nelly Sachs Prize (Germany), 1992; Jewish Quarterly Wingate literary prize for fiction, 2004, for Someone to Run With.

WRITINGS:

FOR ADULTS

Rats: Sipurim (stories; title means “Jogger”), Hakibbutz Hameuchad (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1983.

Hiyukh ha-gedi (novel), Hakibbutz Hameuchad (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1983, translation by Betsy Rosenberg published as The Smile of the Lamb, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (New York, NY), 1991.

’Ayen erekh: Ahavah (novel), Hakibbutz Hameuchad (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1986, translation by Betsy Rosenberg published as See Under: Love, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (New York, NY), 1989.

Ha-zeman ha-tsahov (nonfiction), Hakibbutz Hameuchad (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1987, translation by Haim Watzman published as The Yellow Wind, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (New York, NY), 1988.

Gan Riki: Mahazeh bi-shete ma’arakhot (play; title means “Riki’s Playgroup”), Hakibbutz Hameuchad (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1988.

Nochachim nifkadim (nonfiction), Hakibbutz Hameuchad (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1992, translation by Haim Watzman published as Sleeping on a Wire: Conversations with Palestinians in Israel, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (New York, NY), 1992.

Sefer ha-dikduk ha-pnimi (novel), Hakibbutz Hameuchad (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1992, translation by Betsy Rosenberg published as The Book of Intimate Grammar, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (New York, NY), 1994.

She-tihi li ha-sakin (novel) Hakibbutz Hameuchad (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1998, translation by Vered Almog and Maya Gurantz published as Be My Knife, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (New York, NY), 2001.

Mishehu larutz ito, Hakibbutz Hameuchad (Tel Aviv, Israel), 2000, translation by Vered Almog and Maya Gurantz published as Someone to Run With, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (New York, NY), 2004.

Death as a Way of Life: Israel Ten Years after Oslo, translation by Haim Watzman, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (New York, NY), 2003.

Her Body Knows: Two Novellas, translation by Jessica Cohen, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (New York, NY), 2005.

Dvash araiot (essay), Hakibbutz Hameuchad (Tel Aviv, Israel), 2005, translation by Stuart Schoffman published as Lion’s Honey: The Myth of Samson, Canongate (New York, NY), 2006.

FOR CHILDREN

Du-krav (novel), Kibbutz Hameuchad (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1982, translation by Betsy Rosenberg published as Duel: A Mystery, Bloomsbury (New York, NY), 2004.

Ac hadash legamrei (title means “A Brand New Brother”), Am Oved (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1986.

Itamar metayel al ha-kirot (title means “Itamar Walks on Walls”), Am Oved (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1986.

Itamar mikhtav (title means “The Itamar Letter”), Am Oved (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1986.

Itamar pogesh arnav (title means “Itamar Meets a Rabbit”), Am Oved (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1988.

Ha-safah ha-miuhedet shel Uri (title means “Uri’s Special Language”), Hakibbutz Hameukchad (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1990.

Itamar t tzayad halomot (title means “Itamar the Dream Hunter”), Am Oved (Tel Aviv Israel), 1990.

Itamar ve-kova ha-ksamim ha-shahor (title means “Ita-mar and the Magic Black Hat”), Am Oved (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1992.

Yesh yeladim zig-zag (novel), Kibbutz Hameuchad (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1994, translation by Betsy Rosenberg published as The Zigzag Kid, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (New York, NY), 1997.

Sefer ha-siim shel Fozz (title means “Fozz’s Book of Poems”), Hakibbutz Hameuchad (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1994.

Hayo haytem shnei kofim, (title means “Once There Were Two Monkeys”), Am Oved (Tel Aviv Israel), 1996.

Pajama Sam the Magic Hat Tree, edited by Guy Davis, Lyrick Publishing (Allen, TX), 2000.

Contributor to periodicals, including Koteret Rashit. Grossman’s works have been translated into many languages, including Italian, French, German, and Swedish.

ADAPTATIONS: Books adapted for audio include Lion’s Honey, Brilliance Audio, 2006.

SIDELIGHTS: David Grossman, whose works include novels, nonfiction, children’s books, and a play, is recognized as one of Israel’s most gifted writers. Grossman drew notice in the United States with the publication of The Yellow Wind, a nonfiction book that examines the Arab-Israeli conflict, as well as with his novels The Smile of the Lamb and See Under: Love. A blend of literary voices and techniques, Grossman’s fiction is both thematically and stylistically complex. His characters frequently wrestle with difficult political and philosophical questions while attempting to restore order to their personal lives. Critics have commented that Grossman’s work is thought provoking as well as entertaining. In a Washington Post Book World review of The Smile of the Lamb, for instance, Barbara Probst Solomon hailed the novel’s imagination and depth: “What a rare pleasure to read a novel in which the novelist’s narrative and ideas are so gripping they are worth arguing about! Here we have an authentic talent.”

Grossman’s first work published in the United States, The Yellow Wind, grew out of an assignment for the liberal newsweekly Koteret Rashit for which he interviewed Palestinians and Jews living in the West Bank, a disputed territory west of the Jordan River occupied by Israel since 1967. Marking the twentieth anniversary of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Golan Heights, Grossman’s article highlighted the humanity of the Palestinians, a people that Israel, some critics noted, would rather ignore. The longstanding animosity between Israelis and Palestinians stems from the claims of both sides that the former Palestine, which became divided between Israel and western Jordan, is their rightful homeland. Jews, Christians, and Muslims have historically vied for control of this ancient region based on the religious significance of the area for each group. The increase in Jewish immigration to the area beginning in the 1930s and the plight of the Jewish people in Europe during World War II prompted international pressure to create a Jewish homeland despite the protests of neighboring Arab countries such as Jordan, Syria, and Egypt. Although several countries were involved in the negotiations, the decision was eventually left to the United Nations, which approved the creation of Israel, the Jewish state.

Years of intermittent armed Arab-Israeli conflict followed, as the Palestinians also desired their own state and were opposed to a Jewish homeland. In 1964, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was founded, with the goal of dissolving the nation of Israel using any means necessary. Israel annexed the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Golan Heights during the June 1967 Arab-Israeli (Six-Day) war and retained control despite perpetual unrest among the Palestinian refugees who live in these territories. Israel’s presence in the territories is a divisive issue. Many Israelis believe that it is necessary for their national security, while others contend that Israel is persecuting Palestinians just as Jews have been traditionally persecuted throughout Europe.

The Yellow Wind, an expansion of Grossman’s article for Koteret Rashit, reveals the deep hatred and anguish that the Israeli occupation has instilled in the Palestinian refugees, many of whom have lived their entire lives in the camps. The steadfast determination of many Palestinians to someday return to their professed homeland is illustrated by Grossman’s visit to a kindergarten in the West Bank, where he asked one of the young teachers: “And who will help you return to your village—[PLO leader Yasir] Arafat?” The teacher replied: “Understand, we are against Arafat, because Arafat wants peace. We want a solution by force. What was taken by force will be returned by force.”

Despite the hostility he has sometimes encountered, Grossman provides a compassionate depiction of the plight of the Palestinians. He tells of refugees who yearn to go back to villages that are now part of Israel but are restricted from doing so; of elderly people who are strip-searched by Israeli border guards; of a family whose home had been blown up by the army because a family member had been arrested (and released without being charged); of an old woman who reminds him of his Polish grandmother; and of a crying child whose plastic doll, though found to be free of explosives, is confiscated by a border official who refuses to make exceptions.

In addition to exposing the effects of the Israeli presence on the Palestinians, the author examines the occupation’s influence on Israel and concludes that the consequences are as damaging for Israel as they are for the Palestinians. In its role as occupier, Grossman asserts, Israel has compromised the moral values upon which the nation was built. Grossman’s ability to empathize with the Palestinians provoked controversy in his home country, where some critics accused him of providing an unbalanced view of the conflict.

Sleeping on a Wire: Conversations with Palestinians in Israel takes a similar approach to that used in The Yellow Wind. This time Grossman turns his attention to the Arabs who constitute 20 percent of Israel’s population, recording and transcribing conversations and adding his own conclusions. One of those conclusions is that Israelis, a people “who had never before been a majority, suddenly found themselves ruling over a people who had never been a minority,” as S.T. Meravi wrote in a World Press Review article. Grossman reveals the reality of living as an Arab in Israel. They do receive benefits from living in the Jewish state, but do not enjoy first-class citizenship. “Yes … an Arab citizen has the right to have his court case tried in [the Arabic] language. But no, the judge is unlikely to be an Arab. And if the Arabs’ schools are badly underfunded, if their towns and villages are impoverished … then, no, this is not because the Arab citizens like it that way.”

Discrimination may be a way of life for Israel’s Palestinians, but few of those Grossman interviewed expressed an interest in leaving the country. “They may admire the initiative of their West Bank cousins waging the intifada [uprising],” noted Stephen Brook of New Statesman & Society, “but they have little desire to join them. Israeli Arabs live in a democracy, however flawed, and have no wish to start a new life in Syria or Iraq.” Though the Arab minority may seem complacent in this way, Israel’s Jews still consider them a viable threat. “They fear Islamic extremism,” noted Brook. In the years since the Middle Eastern conflicts escalated and The Yellow Wind and Sleeping on a Wire were published, Grossman has seen a change in Israeli attitudes. “When I look at Israeli society today,” he told Tikkun editor Michael Lerner in 2001, “I see how vulgar and cruel many people tend to be. I think that it was recognizing this terrible price that Israel was paying for this war that led [Prime Minister] Yitzhak Rabin to finally realize that the war needed to end, and it was so ironic that he then was murdered by this very violence and fanaticism that prevail now in Israel.”

The Israeli occupation of the West Bank also inspired Grossman to write a novel, The Smile of the Lamb, which was published in Israel in 1983 and issued in the United States in 1991. The book is alternately narrated by four characters: Uri, an idealistic young Israeli soldier stationed in Andal in the West Bank; Katzman, Uri’s cynical commander and a Holocaust survivor; Shosh, a psychotherapist who is married to Uri and is having an affair with Katzman; and Khilmi, an old Arab mystic whom Uri befriends. When Khilmi’s son is killed by Israeli soldiers, Uri, who has growing doubts about the legitimacy of Israels presence in the territories, leaves his unit to deliver the news to Khilmi. Overcome with anger and grief, Khilmi takes his friend Uri hostage, declaring that he will kill him unless the Israelis withdraw from the West Bank. Katzman, who suspects Khilmi is a terrorist, leads a rescue team to Khilmi’s cave, where the novel culminates in a violent, and ambiguous, conclusion.

Several critics were not completely satisfied with The Smile of the Lamb, complaining that some passages were overwritten, but they nevertheless hailed Grossman as a new literary talent.

Grossman wrote The Smile of the Lamb, he explained in a Publishers Weekly interview with Michael Han-delzalts, “because I was so anguished about the occupation. The Yellow Wind tells us about the symptoms of the disease, while The Smile of the Lamb tells us—tells me—about the disease itself. The nonfiction account was descriptive. The novel is normative [setting out the norms by which society lives]. I think that the novel can be a metaphor for every kind of distortion in human relationships, for every penetration into the ‘other’ without his willing it, for every oppression.”

Grossman again writes about the effects of human conflict in his second novel, See Under, which is comprised of four sections, each written in a different style. In the first the reader is introduced to the protagonist, a nine-year-old boy named Momik whose parents survived the Holocaust of World War II, when the Nazis created concentration camps and then massacred nearly six million Jews. The war and the death camps continue to haunt Momik’s parents and their friends, but despite Momik’s curiosity about what they experienced, his parents refuse to divulge what happened to them during the war. So Momik, as his obsession about the Holocaust grows, defines the “Nazi Beast” for himself—a monster whose favorite food is Jews—and fantasizes about subduing the creature and alleviating his parents’ fears.

The second section of See Under is the first-person narrative of the adult Momik, a frustrated writer who travels to Poland to retrace the footsteps of Bruno Schulz, a renowned Jewish author killed by a Nazi during World War II. Still preoccupied with the horror of the Holocaust, Momik has become an aloof and embittered man who insists to his wife that becoming “attached to any one place, or any one person” is potentially dangerous. In Poland, Momik begins to sort out his life by writing stories, the first of which concerns Schulz. In Momik’s tale Schulz is not killed during the war, but escapes to the sea where he sprouts gills and is adopted by a school of salmon. Reviewers compared this segment of See Under to Gabriel Garcia Marquéz’s One Hundred Years of Solitude and Giinter Grass’s Tin Drum, for its seamless blend of fantasy and reality.

The third portion of the novel is Momik’s story about his great uncle Anshel Wasserman, a renowned author of children’s books. During World War II, Wasserman is interned in a Nazi concentration camp where his captors attempt to kill him. But despite Wasserman’s wish to escape the atrocities of the world through death, the Nazis are unable to oblige: bullets graze his skull and repeated gassings only leave him healthier. This unusual phenomenon brings Wasserman to the attention of the pitiless commandant, Neigel, who learns that Wasserman is the author of stories that the officer enjoyed as a child. Neigel engages the author to spin tales for him nightly, and Wasserman agrees, with the condition that after each story, Neigel must shoot him.

The extended story that Wasserman tells is an updated version of his children’s adventure tales, which concern a multiethnic group of children—“Children of the Heart”—who journey around the world doing good deeds. The Children of the Heart, now aging and disillusioned, have established a community at the zoo in Warsaw, Poland, where they discover Kazik, a baby who has a rare disease that causes him to age a lifetime in twenty-four hours. After twenty-two hours and twenty minutes, Kazik asks to see the world outside the zoo, whereupon he sees Neigel’s concentration camp and commits suicide in despair. In telling his story, Wasserman forces Neigel to see the humanity of his victims, a feat that critics considered to be a testimony to the power of art.

The fourth and final section of See Under is an encyclopedia of Kazik’s compressed life, complete with entries and cross-references (including the novel’s title). Characters from other portions of the book are also revisited in this concluding section, which, in a puzzle-like fashion, connects the novel’s disparate tales. Reviewers felt this segment of the book was particularly imaginative, and New York Times Book Review contributor Edmund White judged that the entire novel “crackles with sparks of artistic invention.” Grossman’s use of different literary techniques drew praise from New York Review of Books contributor Denis Donoghue, who assessed, “One of the many remarkable features of See Under is Grossman’s control of the multiplicity of styles and emotional tones his several stories require, from the demotic to the sublime.”

Two novels centering on young people marked Grossman’s output in the 1990s. The Book of Intimate Grammar finds eleven-year-old Aron Kleinreid living with his ill-bred parents in a seedy Jerusalem housing project in the days preceding the Six-Day War. Smaller and less mature than his peers, Aron languishes for a while in self-loathing, declaring his contempt for the adult world. But despite these disadvantages, Aron is a bright and inquisitive boy. The child invents “Aroning,” a way to slip from grim reality and enter a fantasy world where he is in control. “Like David in Call It Sleep, Aron has visions,” noted John Leonard in a review in Nation. “Like Alex in Portnoy’s Complaint, he spends too much time in the bathroom. Like Oskar in The Tin Drum, he refuses to grow up.” New Statesman & Society contributor Simon Louvish observed, “In the accumulation of small details, Grossman builds a picture of Aron’s refusal of the social rites of passage in favour of his own quirky rituals.” The critic had some pause with the English translation of this novel, saying that the language of The Book of Intimate Grammar is “of the particular Hebrew argot of its own time and place.” However, to Booklist contributors Alice Joyce and Betsy Rosenberg, the novel is infused with “densely cadenced prose” that “fairly bristles with the profound energy of Aron’s adolescent conundrum.”

In The Zigzag Kid, a novella written for children that ended up on Israel’s adult best-seller list, Grossman “takes a major departure from the dark tone and themes of his previous work,” according to a Publishers Weekly contributor. The kid in question is Amnon Feuerberg, whose imminent bar mitzvah has him on edge. He “could not be more different from the doom-obsessed Momik” of See Under, noted the critic, because Amnon is a child of the contemporary decades who never knew the Holocaust firsthand. On a train trip to Haifa, he falls under the influence of Felix Glick, an elderly career criminal whose real relationship to Amnon is a turning point in the story. Booklist contributor Bill Ott deemed The Zigzag Kid “a rollicking delight, combining on-the-road adventure with meaty reflection on what it means to be happy.” The author, noted Leon I. Yudkin in World Literature Today, “possesses the ability to present the world of childhood vision to the adult, and thus offers fresh access to an overfamiliar scene.”

His children’s books, Grossman told Los Angeles Times interviewer David L. Ulin, are a comforting change from his usual fare. “I want them to be like a literary kiss on the cheek of the child before you send them floating to the night,” he said. “But I don’t believe you can protect someone from the atrocity of life. On the contrary, I feel that children are almost born with… a tragic world view of life. They see things and can’t express them, but when I look at the eyes of my children sometimes, I see them understanding things.”

In the novel Be My Knife, Grossman returns to adult issues. At a class reunion thirty-three-year-old Yair, a married bookseller, notices the slightly older Miriam, the mother of an autistic son, and goes home and writes her a seductive letter. “The relationship he proposes is one that will brook no reticence,” wrote Neil Gordon in a New York Times Book Review article. Yair does not want to “know” Miriam in any way except through steamy letters. An epistolary affair develops in which the two characters reveal some disturbing personal secrets. Yair and Miriam’s relationship is depicted through diaries that give both his and her point of view. The novel “is more than an exercise in semantics, though,” noted London Daily Telegraph contributor Robert Hanks. “Grossman’s anatomy of relationships is acute, and sometimes shaking.” Gordon acknowledged: “It is a difficult way to tell a story and, at first, [Be My Knife] is as annoying as it is impressive. Yet in very short order the reader becomes engaged in nothing less than a transformative work of art, the finest novel to date by a writer who has been, for nearly two decades, one of the most original and talented not only in his own country but anywhere.”

Death as a Way of Life: Israel Ten Years after Oslo is a collection of commentaries written by the author between 1993 and 2002. For the most part, the pieces reflect his changing attitude about the ongoing strife between Israel and the Palestinians as the promise of the Oslo accords (a peace process agreement between Israel and the Palestinians) slowly devolves into familiar fighting and bloodshed. Richard Eder, writing in the New York Times, commented: “Mr. Grossman charts the decline of his own hopes, along with those of some on each side, that understanding the Other and acting on the understanding would allow a future.” Eder went on to note: “The earlier pieces come down hardest on Israel; the later ones… put a full measure of blame on the terrorist attacks and the failure of Palestinian society to stand against them.” A Publishers Weekly contributor wrote that the author “creates something astonishing—a moving tale of, and comment on, modern Israeli culture and politics.” Another reviewer writing in Kirkus Reviews referred to Death as a Way of Life as “chillingly, sometimes agonizingly, eloquent on hope’s fading light.”

Grossman’s 2004 novel Someone to Run With tells the story of a young runaway named Tamar, who becomes a busker (street performer) on the streets of Jerusalem, and Assaf, a boy hired by a city hall official to find a runaway dog’s rightful owner. As the story progresses, the reader slowly learns why this middle-class girl has run away. In the meantime, it soon becomes apparent that the dog is no ordinary canine as it begins leading Assaf in a search for Tamar. In a review in the New York Times, Claire Messud wrote: “Someone to Run With is a curious novel, an uneasy hybrid. It succeeds best where it strives least—its climax is, in the way of cliché, most satisfying indeed—but it also provides food for thought.” Hazel Rochman wrote in Booklist that the novel is “part urban survival adventure, part YA romance, and part mystery.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor noted: “Grossman’s most entertaining book yet.” Another reviewer writing in Publishers Weekly commented: “In Grossman’s hands, this plot is both pleasingly familiar and made new through immersion in the details of Israeli life.”

In Her Body Knows: Two Novellas, Grossman presents the stories “Frenzy” and “Her Body Knows.” “Frenzy” focuses on a car ride during which a shy scholar named Shaul relates to his sister-in-law his belief that his wife is carrying on a long-term affair. As Shaul goes on and on about his suspicions, the reader becomes increasingly aware that he may be on the verge of insanity and that there is some doubt as to whether or not his wife is really having an affair. In “Her Body Knows,” a novelist is visiting her dying mother and recounts how her mother was sensitive to everyone but her own daughter. Commenting on “Frenzy,” New York Times Book Review contributor Tova Mirvis wrote: “Grossman’s description is deeply erotic, bristling with physical detail. His sentences are dizzying, intoxicating, and Jessica Cohen’s translation captures their intricate intensity.” Mirvis also wrote: “The need to construct alternate realities lies at the heart of both novellas, but the realities Grossman’s characters construct aren’t pretty: there are no happy marriages in these fantasies, no idyllic childhoods.” Elaina Richardson, writing in O, the Oprah Magazine, commented: “Grossman’s teasing ability to satisfy and yet mock our interest in true confessions is at the heart of these obsessive tales.” Jennifer Baker commented in Booklist that the author uses “a stream-of-consciousness style that combines magical realism with highly sensual, often erotic descriptions.” A Publishers Weekly contributor wrote that the author “can capture surprising psychological depth in a single sentence, and here he opens up whole lives on every page.”

Grossman retells the story of the Biblical Samson in Lion’s Honey: The Myth of Samson. In the process of retelling the story, the author comments and analyzes the original Biblical text and reflects on issues such as whether or not Samson is aware of his destiny. Grossman not only focuses on the most remembered part of Samson’s tale—that is, of his superhuman strength drawn from his long hair and his eventual destruction of the Philistine’s temple after being captured, blinded, and having his hair shorn—but also the story about the riddle of the honey that leads to Sampson’s wife’s death and his burning of the corn crop of the Philistines. In a review of Lion’s Honey in the Spectator, Digby Anderson wrote: “The first merit of Grossman’s book is then to redirect us to a tale which we thought we knew and remind us of how much we have forgotten or never noticed. The second is to highlight the puzzles in the original tale and show that they are indeed puzzles.” A Publishers Weekly contributor commented that the author’s “consideration falls squarely into the Jewish tradition of biblical exegesis, imparting both psychological and literary meaning to the story.”

Grossman commented on the foundation of his work as a whole in the Publishers Weekly interview with Han-delzalts: “The subject that captures and fascinates me the most is that clash between the individual and the arbitrariness of outside events, of governments, of the Holocaust, of machines, of the human body. The individual can redeem and redefine himself in front of that arbitrariness. For me, every book has been a part of the answer.”

In an essay in which he examines the Palestine conflict and the Holocaust in Grossman’s fiction, Yudkin wrote that these “are also the basic themes that underlie contemporary Israeli existence. They provide the ballast and the raison d’etre—as well as the major obstacles and difficulties—for the Jewish presence in the land. Israeli existence is problematic and tragic as well as challenging and exciting. This is what Grossman attempts to convey, often through the eyes of a first-or third-person child protagonist, in fiction rich in plot construction as well as racy journalism, all based on the timbre of the human voice and the pain of experienced history.”

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Volume 67, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1992, pp. 56-76.

Encyclopedia of World Literature in the Twentieth Century, 3rd edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1999.

PERIODICALS

Antioch Review, summer, 1993, Souad Dajani, review of Sleeping on a Wire: Conversations with Palestinians in Israel, p. 460.

ARTnews, October, 1994, John Leonard, review of The Book of Intimate Grammar, pp. 426-430.

Booklist, August, 1994, Alice Joyce and Betsy Rosenberg, review of The Book of Intimate Grammar, p. 2022; March 15, 1995, review of Yesh Yeladim Zigzag, p. 1314; August, 1997, Bill Ott, review of The Zigzag Kid, p. 1878; April 15, 2003, George Cohen, review of Death as a Way of Life: Israel Ten Years after Oslo, p. 1445; December 1, 2003, Hazel Rochman, review of Someone to Run With, p. 645; September 1, 2004, Ed Sullivan, review of Duel, p. 121; April 15, 2005, Jennifer Baker, review of Her Body Knows: Two Novellas, p. 1431.

Books, January, 1993, review of Sleeping on a Wire, p. 16; spring, 1999, review of Duel, p. 24.

Bookseller, May 7, 2004, “Grossman and Elon Win Jewish Prizes,” p. 6.

Commonweal, October 7, 1994, review of The Book of Intimate Grammar, p. 26.

Comparative Literature Studies, summer, 1994, Rachel Feldhay Brenner, review of The Book of Internal Grammar, pp. 270-291.

Critique, spring, 1999, review of The Book of Intimate Grammar, p. 203.

Daily Telegraph (London, England), February 9, 2002, Robert Hanks, review of Be My Knife, p. 6.

Economist (England), January 5, 2002, review of Be My Knife, p. 73.

Guardian (London, England), March 21, 1993, review of Sleeping on a Wire, p. 19; July 18, 1993, review of Sleeping on a Wire, p. 28; February 16, 2002, Linda Grant, review of Be My Knife, p. 10.

International Affairs, January, 1994, Keith Kyle, review of Sleeping on a Wire, pp. 178-179.

Journal of Palestine Studies, winter, 1994, Deborah J. Gerner, review of Sleeping on a Wire, pp. 107-109.

Kirkus Reviews, June 1, 1994, review of The Book of Intimate Grammar, p. 721; July 15, 1997, review of The Zigzag Kid, p. 1051; November 1, 2001, review of Be My Knife, p. 1505; March 15, 2003, review of Death as a Way of Life, p. 440; October 15, 2003, review of Someone to Run With, p. 1241; July 15, 2004, review of Duel, p. 685.

Library Journal, March 1, 1993, James A. Rhodes, review of Sleeping on a Wire, p. 94; August, 1994, Molly Abramowitz, review of The Book of Intimate Grammar, p. 129; August, 1997, Marc A. Kloszewski, review of The Zigzag Kid, p. 128.

London Review of Books, January 12, 1995, review of The Book of Intimate Grammar, p. 16.

Los Angeles Times, December 2, 1997, David L. Ulin, “The Israeli, Who Has Delivered a Fourth Novel, Sees So Many Issues in the World, Yet So Little Time to Address Them,” interview, p. 5.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, February 14, 1993, review of Sleeping on a Wire, p. 3; August 28, 1994, review of The Book of Intimate Grammar, p. 2; September 21, 1997, review of The Zigzag Kid, p. 2.

Middle East Policy, spring, 1993, Michael Rubner, review of Sleeping on a Wire, pp. 133-135.

Middle East Quarterly, spring, 2004, Steven Plaut, review of Death as a Way of Life, p. 83.

MultiCultural Review, December, 1993, review of The Yellow Wind, p. 18.

Nation, October 17, 1994, John Leonard, review of The Book of Intimate Grammar, pp. 426-430.

New Statesman & Society, May 28, 1993, Stephen Brook, review of Sleeping on a Wire, p. 37; December 9, 1994, Simon Louvish, review of The Book of Intimate Grammar, p. 40; May 17, 1996, review of The Book of Intimate Grammar, p. 40.

Newsweek, February 15, 1993, Russell Watson, review of Sleeping on a Wire, p. 61.

New Yorker, March 15, 1993, review of Sleeping on a Wire, p. 123; February 11, 2002, review of Be My Knife, p. 86.

New York Review of Books, September 28, 1989, Denis Donoghue, review of See Under: Love, pp. 39-43; June 10, 1993, Amos Elon, review of Sleeping on a Wire, pp. 14-17; December 22, 1994, Alfred Kazin, review of The Book of Intimate Grammar, pp. 36-37.

New York Times, February 26, 1993, Michiko Kakutani, review of Sleeping on a Wire, p. B2; October 6, 1997, Richard Bernstein, review of The Zigzag Kid, p. E8; May 21, 2003, Richard Eder, review of Death as a Way of Life; February 8, 2004, Claire Messud, review of Someone to Run With; August 14, 2006, Noga Tarnopolsky, “Israeli Author’s Son, 20, Is Killed in Battle,” p. A12.

New York Times Book Review, March 7, 1993, Robin Wright, review of Sleeping on a Wire, p. 17; June 6, 1993, review of Sleeping on a Wire, p. 41; December 5, 1993, review of Sleeping on a Wire, p. 70; November 13, 1994, Lore Dickstein, review of The Book of Intimate Grammar, p. 10; December 4, 1994, review of The Book of Intimate Grammar, p. 70; November 26, 1995, review of The Book of Intimate Grammar, p. 32; December 3, 1995, review of The Book of Intimate Grammar, p. 86; October 26, 1997, Brian Hall, review of The Zigzag Kid, p. 15; November 9, 1997, review of See Under, p. 36; January 13, 2002, Neil Gordon, review of Be My Knife, p. 7; January 20, 2002, review of Be My Knife, p. 18; January 27, 2002, review of Be My Knife, p. 22; May 15, 2005, Tova Mirvis, review of Her Body Knows.

Observer (London, England), June 27, 1993, review of Sleeping on a Wire, p. 63; July 25, 1993, review of Sleeping on a Wire, p. 55; April 24, 1994, reviews of Sleeping on a Wire and The Book of Intimate Grammar, p. 22; October 9, 1994, review of The Book of Intimate Grammar, p. 22; October 23, 1994, review of The Book of Intimate Grammar, p. 17; November 16, 1997, review of The Zigzag Kid, p. 16; April 4, 1999, review of Duel, p. 13.

O, the Oprah Magazine, May, 2005, Elaina Richardson, review of Her Body Knows, p. 240.

Partisan Review, fall, 1996, Alan Mintz, reviews of The Book of Intimate Grammar, Sleeping on a Wire, The Yellow Wind, See Under, and Smile of the Lamb, pp. 691-703; November 16, 1997, review of The Zigzag Kid, p. 16.

Publishers Weekly, December 14, 1990, Michael Han-delzalts, “David Grossman: His Books Reflect a Highly Moralistic View of Israeli Society,” interview, pp. 50-51; January 11, 1993, review of Sleeping on a Wire, p. 50; June 20, 1994, review of The Book of Intimate Grammar, p. 95; July 28, 1997, review of The Zigzag Kid, p. 52; August 18, 1997, review of See Under, p. 90; October 22, 2001, review of Be My Knife, p. 43; April 14, 2003, review of Death as a Way of Life, p. 58, Steven Zeitchik, interview, p. 58; October 6, 2003, review of Someone to Run With, p. 56; April 11, 2005, review of Her Body Knows, p. 35; February 20, 2006, review of Lion’s Honey: The Myth of Sam-son, p. 151.

School Librarian, spring, 1999, review of Duel, p. 44; spring, 2001, review of Duel, p. 7.

School Library Journal, August, 2004, Connie Tyrrell Burns, review of Duel, p. 122.

Spectator, December 6, 1997, review of The Zigzag Kid, p. 54; February 9, 2002, Michael Glover, review of Be My Knife, p. 39; June 10, 2006, Digby Anderson, review of Lion’s Honey.

Tikkun, May, 1995, review of See Under, p. 19; May, 2001, Michael Lerner, “A Conversation with David Grossman,” p. 11.

Times Literary Supplement, September 2, 1994, D.J.Enright, review of The Book of Intimate Grammar, p. 12; November 14, 1997, Keith Miller, review of The Zigzag Kid, p. 23.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), October 2, 1994, review of The Book of Intimate Grammar, p. 3.

Village Voice, August 23, 1994, review of The Book of Intimate Grammar, p. 90.

Village Voice Literary Supplement, February, 1993, review of Sleeping on a Wire, p. 21.

Virginia Quarterly Review, summer, 1993, review of Sleeping on a Wire, p. 98.

Wall Street Journal, January 22, 1993, Amy Dockser Marcus, review of Sleeping on a Wire, p. A8.

Washington Post Book World, March 20, 1988, Barbara Probst Solomon, review of The Yellow Wind, p. 5; January 31, 1993, review of Sleeping on a Wire, p. 5; August 28, 1994, review of The Book of Intimate Grammar, p. 3; November 16, 1997, review of The Zigzag Kid, p. 8.

World Literature Today, winter, 1998, Leon I. Yudkin, review of The Zigzag Kid, p. 197; summer-autumn, 2002, Leon I. Yudkin, “The Holocaust in the Fiction of David Grossman,” p. 62.

World Press Review, August, 1993, S.T. Meravi, review of Sleeping on a Wire, p. 49.*