Biography

Born in Jerusalem in 1954, David Grossman is one of the leading Israeli writers of our time. After starting out as a radio presenter, he made his international breakthrough in 1989 with the novel See Under: Love, about the Shoah as seen through the eyes of a child. He has frequently voiced his support for peace in the Middle East. In 2006, he joined with Amos Oz in calling for an end to attacks on Lebanon, soon after which his own son was killed in action in the same war. That event became the subject of his 2011 book Falling Out of Time. Grossman has some twenty publications to his name, ranging from novels and children’s books to collections of essays and travel reports. In his writing he employs a multitude of literary techniques and plays with language and the boundary between imagination and reality. Despite the heavy themes that he frequently addresses, his novels are also light-footed and full of grotesque humour. If anything characterizes him, it is his aversion to indifference. As he himself once wrote: ‘Indifference is a very sophisticated way of cruelty.’

David Grossman’s oeuvre has been translated into numerous languages. Falling Out of Time has been adapted for the stage on various occasions. He has been the recipient of various literary awards, including the Prix Médicis Étranger, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade and the Geschwister-Scholl-Preis. His 2015 novel A Horse Walks Into a Bar won the prestigious Man Booker International Prize and received rave reviews around the world.