The Zigzag Kid (Hebrew: Yesh Yeladim Zigzag) was published by Hakibbutz Hameuchad in 1994 and translated into English by Betsy Rosenberg in 1997 (published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux). The novel follows twelve-year-old Amnon (Nonny) Feuerberg on a journey across Israel on the eve of his bar mitzvah — a journey that has been secretly arranged by his policeman father and his father’s old adversary, the master criminal Felix Glick.
The adventure is both literal (Nonny travels by train, encounters various characters, solves puzzles) and metaphorical (he is traveling toward adulthood and the secrets of his family’s past). His mother, who died when he was young, was an undercover policewoman whose story intersects with Felix Glick’s in ways that Nonny must uncover. The journey becomes a detective story in which the mystery is his own identity — who his mother really was, what she did, and what parts of her live on in him.
Grossman deploys the conventions of adventure fiction — disguises, chases, reversals, coincidences — with genuine pleasure. The novel moves with the pace and energy of a thriller while simultaneously addressing the serious themes that preoccupy all his work: the relationship between generations, the weight of family history, the stories we need about our origins to understand who we are.
The book is nominally for young readers, but like the best children’s literature it addresses universal themes with a sophistication that engages adult readers equally. It has been translated into over twenty languages and adapted for film.
Collecting The Zigzag Kid
First edition English (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1997): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First English edition, fine/fine: $15–$35
- Very good/very good: $5–$15