To the End of the Land (Hebrew: Isha Borachat MiBsora) was published by Hakibbutz Hameuchad in 2008 and translated into English by Jessica Cohen in 2010 (published by Alfred A. Knopf). The novel is widely considered Grossman’s masterpiece and one of the great anti-war novels of the twenty-first century.
Ora’s son Ofer has just completed his military service when he volunteers for another operation. Ora cannot bear the possibility of receiving the dreaded notification — the knock at the door that tells an Israeli parent their child is dead — so she flees. She leaves her phone, leaves her home, and sets out walking through the Galilee with her former lover Avram (Ofer’s biological father, who has never met his son). As they walk, Ora tells Avram the story of Ofer’s life — every detail, from birth to the present — in the desperate, irrational belief that as long as she is telling his story, as long as his narrative continues, he cannot die.
The novel was written during the Second Lebanon War of 2006. Grossman’s son Uri was serving in an armored unit. On the penultimate day of the war — after the ceasefire had been announced but before it took effect — Uri was killed when his tank was hit by a missile. Grossman was near the end of the novel when this happened. He finished it afterward, but did not change its ending. The book carries the weight of this fact without ever mentioning it directly.
The novel’s structure — a walk through landscape punctuated by the narration of a life — allows Grossman to encompass everything: childhood, adolescence, military service, family dynamics, romantic love, Israeli society’s militarization, and the particular horror of raising children in a country where war is perpetual. Ora’s narrative is both an act of love and an act of protest — a refusal to accept that her son is reducible to a casualty statistic.
Collecting To the End of the Land
First edition English (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2010): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First English edition, fine/fine: $20–$50
- Very good/very good: $8–$20
- Signed: $50–$120