More Than I Love My Life (Hebrew: Yoter MiMa SheAni Ohev et Chayai) was published by Hakibbutz Hameuchad in 2020 and translated into English by Jessica Cohen in 2021 (published by Alfred A. Knopf). The novel is inspired by the true story of a woman Grossman knew — Eva Panić-Nahir, a Yugoslav Jewish woman who was imprisoned on Goli Otok, Tito’s brutal island prison camp, for refusing to denounce her husband as a Stalinist.
The novel reimagines this story through three generations: Vera (the grandmother who survived Goli Otok), Nina (her daughter, who was abandoned at age three when Vera was imprisoned and has never forgiven her), and Gill (Nina’s daughter, a filmmaker who arranges a journey back to the island hoping to reconcile her mother and grandmother).
The journey forces each woman to confront what she has hidden: Vera’s silence about what she endured, Nina’s rage at being abandoned, Gill’s desire to understand and heal what cannot be healed. The prison island — now abandoned, its buildings in ruins — becomes the physical location where the family’s buried history must finally be spoken.
Grossman’s theme is the cost of moral courage across generations: Vera’s refusal to betray her husband was heroic, but it also meant abandoning her child. That abandonment created damage that has transmitted itself through three generations. The novel asks whether heroism in the political sphere can ever be separated from its consequences in the personal — whether the same act can be both supremely moral and deeply destructive.
Collecting More Than I Love My Life
First edition English (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2021): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First English edition, fine/fine: $15–$30
- Very good/very good: $5–$15