Press

What the critics say

Extraordinary, impassioned... To the End of the Land is without question one of the most powerful and moving novels I have ever read
- Guardian

It is tricky to set out the scale of Grossman's achievement without resorting to reviewers' clichés. He has aimed as high as it is possible to do in a novel which deals with the great questions of love, intimacy, war, memory and fear of personal and national annihilation-and has overwhelmingly achieved everything.
- Independent

This is a great novel, a rare example of a book that lives up to its billing, its emotional depth and humanity balanced by formidable formal control and pacing of the chronological sequence, the text rendered into an English that mostly finds the cadence and associative range of the original Hebrew... To The End Of The Land is, quite literally, unforgettable
- Sunday Herald

This is a book of overwhelming power and intensity, David Grossman's masterpiece. Flaubert created his Emma, Tolstoy made his Anna, and now we have Grossman's Ora - as fully alive, as fully embodied, as any character in recent fiction. I devoured this long novel in a feverish trance. Wrenching, beautiful, unforgettable
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There are some writers in whose words one recognizes the texture of life. David Grossman is such a writer. He is a master of the emotionally accurate and significant. His characters don't so much lie on the page as rise before the reader's eyes, in three dimensions, their skin covered in prose that both stabs with insight and shines with compassion
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Grossman's use of language - emotive, poignant, sometimes bewitching - draws the reader in and Ora becomes a truly sympathetic character. An eloquent and captivating read, and quite possibly a landmark novel in Israeli fiction.
- Timeout

Very rarely, a few times in a lifetime, you open a book and when you close it again nothing can ever be the same. To the End of the Land is a book of this magnitude. David Grossman may be the most gifted writer I've ever read. To read it is to have yourself taken apart, undone, touched at the place of your own essence; it is to be turned back, as if after a long absence, into a human being
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Honeyed and portentous, rhythmic and often breathless, the prose sweeps the reader into a pool of shimmering reflection
- Times Literary Supplement

Grossman's account of Ora and Avram's lengthening flight from their painful lives is a tour de force.
- Spectator

David Grossman explores how words illuminate the darkest landscapes and how lives can be shaped and preserved through stories
- Daily Mail

wonderful, and desperately sad
- Metro

Sorrow and magnificence go hand in hand in Israeli writer David Grossman's intimate view of lives held hostage to the threat of violence and danger...potent, moving and emotionally raw. To the End of the Land is unforgettable
- Marie Claire

The book is full of incidents of magical thinking of the kind that anyone who has ever tried in vain to protect someone they love will recognise. This is a powerful epic of love, loss and loyalty
- Psychologies Magazine

...terrific...this is a powerful and memorable novel, which movingly evokes the strains of war and peace in one household...British people are often accused of failing to see things from the Israeli point of view. To the End of the Land sears this perspective onto the memory.
- Sunday Times

...extraordinary epic of love, war and sorrow...Stunning-brilliantly written and beautifully constructed.
- The Times

...a deeply serious, utterly honest work about the state of Israel.
- Financial Times

David Grossman writes with a vulnerability that is free of fear, poetic and powerful, sensual and angry, passionate and gently. He writes not only for his survival but for ours as well.
- Die Zeit

...a powerful and memorable novel, which movingly evokes the strains of war and peace...British people are often accused of failing to see things from the Israeli point of view. To the End of the Land sears this perspective onto the memory.
- Sunday Times Culture Magazine

Stunning-brilliantly written and beautifully constructed.
- The Times

Is a heartbreaking, riveting portrait of modern Israel. A family story, a rich character study, a story of war. Unmissable.
- The Times, Christmas round up

A work of art
- New Statesman, Christmas round up

First-rate writing about the craziness of modern-war.
- Daily Telegraph, Christmas round up

Breathtaking skill...an extraordinary emotional charge.
- Guardian, Christmas round up

David Grossman laid bare the flayed soul of Israel
- Independent, Christmas round up

Articulates the pain and complexity of being born in Israel so powerfully that it will unquestionably be studied by future generations.
- Herald, Christmas round up

Magnificent
- Times Literary Supplement, Christmas round up

Often impressive, sometimes touching
- London Review of Books

He is the finest living novelist I have read. His work is visceral and clear-headed. Though I loved Franzen's Freedom, Grossman's novel is better
- Observer

To define David Grossman's masterly new novel as the ultimate anti-war oeuvre would not do it justice...To the End of the Land is richer and more complex than a chronicle of war. It is an intimate portrayal of a woman and mother, Ora, who has been compared to Flaubert's Emma or Tolstoy's Anna...With characters with whom the reader can empathise, a powerful if disturbing theme and an element of suspense and the unknown, Grossman's novel, while not easy to read, is well worth the effort
- Tablet

Further proof the Very Long Novel is in rude health with David Grossman's fine book about the seemingly endless conflict between Israel and Palestine
- Metro

Movingly evokes the strains of war and peace in one Israeli household
- Sunday Times

Grossman's soaring, wrenching journey through Israel ... grapples with the largest of themes: memory and identity, community and nationhood. Yet through its picaresque plot, it always remains a mother's story and a family romance... Grossman aims high, digs deep, and returns from inner and outer voyages with darkly glittering jewels of insight
- Independent

An intimate and national epic
- Herald

A stunning, powerful novel
- Telegraph

To the End of the Land is a novel of relationships: personal, moral and political: all reviewed against a muted landscape of pain, threat and hostility... Grossman list his youngest son Uri in the final hours of the second Lebanon war and his personal connection to the trauma of conflict adds weight to this substantial work
- Financial Times