Published: 09 September 2010
by JAMIE WELHAM

ISRAEL'S foremost author David Grossman is a man in demand. It was as if Friends House in Euston had transmogrified into Delphi on Thursday evening, with almost 1,000 devotees hoping for some osmotic transfer of literary magic from Grossman, who was in London to talk about his latest novel To the End of the Land. 

It is the story of Israel and its people – the “situation” as it is euphemistically known – seen through the eyes of a mother and her two sons. It has been compared to War and Peace and you get the feeling such comparisons are not over the top. 

For Grossman the family was a natural choice. “The biggest drama of humanity is the drama of the family,”  he said. “The most important moments in history do not happen in parliaments and palaces, but in kitchens and bedrooms”  – an observation painfully felt by Grossman, who was halfway through writing his novel when his 20-year-old son Uri, a tank commander in the Israeli army, was killed in a Hezbollah attack in 2006. 

Writing was his catharsis but Grossman said the tragedy did not rupture the direction of the book, although it has made him more critical of his country’s foreign policy. Is it difficult for him   being a leftie in Israel? 

“In Israel it’s easier to change your sex than it is your political position, but you have to do what you can,” he said. “In Britain, you plan harvests for 2030 – in Israel we cannot count on the future. It is an anxiety that marks the people. Israel does not feel like home.” 

Grossman radiates wisdom. He talks about his homeland with tenderness and love, surprisingly undiminished by his grief. He was introduced with the loftiest of compliments – if the world leaders who are convened in Washington this week read a copy of To the End of the Land, there would probably be peace in the Middle East. It is ironic in a week when another man who professes to do so much for international diplomacy in that part of the world is sitting at number one in the book charts.

• To the End of the Land. By David Grossman. Jonathan Cape, £13.99