Author and peace activist David Grossman draws on life and families in modern Israel for his novels – never more so than in his latest book, which was completed following the death in combat of his son, writes  ARMINTA WALLACE

EVERY WEEK the Israeli writer David Grossman and his family travel eastwards across Jerusalem to the Palestinian suburb of Sheikh Jarrah. There, in the company of several hundred like-minded people, they stage a peaceful protest against settlers who have seized Palestinian houses. It is, he explains, an area where – before the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948 – Jews and Arabs lived together in relative tranquillity. His mother, for example, lived in Sheikh Jarrah as a girl.

"So there are Jews who have deeds for houses there. Legally, they have the right to go back and take them over – but it is such a wrong idea to do it, you know? To settle there today, in the heart of a Palestinian neighbourhood. And to settle in the most provocative way, as settlers always do – with huge flags, and a huge menorah on the roof, and shouting and harassing the Palestinians who live there." The demonstrators go and stand, registering their protest simply by their presence. Sometimes they get beaten by the cops, sometimes not. It's a small action in a big conflict, but his faithfulness to it reveals a good deal about Grossman. He's a writer with a worldwide literary reputation, but also a peace activist of 20 years' standing. While his novels explore the inner landscape of Israeli family life, he has also maintained a high public profile, speaking out, writing in newspapers, researching non-fiction books such as The Yellow Wind, a passionate denunciation of the occupation of the West Bank.

Grossman's new novel, To the End of the Land, weaves the two strands – the personal and the political – into a tale as rich and satisfyingly solid as a handmade carpet. It also weaves art into life – or perhaps that should be the other way around.

He began the book in the spring of 2003, when his eldest son Yonatan had almost finished his military service and his younger son, Uri, was just about to begin. “I thought it would be a way for me to be with him,” Grossman says in his clearly-articulated, careful English. “I knew Uri would serve in the occupied territories. I knew he would face terrible experiences. And as a father, I wanted to be able to accompany him as much as I can.” As a writer, moreover, it didn’t seem too outlandish to hope that the book might act as a kind of magic charm – that for as long as he was working on a book about a woman whose son is serving with the Israeli Defence Forces, his own son might somehow be ok.

But in July 2006, all hell broke out on the Lebanese border. Hezbollah attacks on Israeli soldiers led to massive retaliation; the conflict escalated into all-out war; after a murderous month during which almost 2,000 people were killed, the UN brokered a ceasefire. Hours before it was due to come into effect, however, Uri Grossman’s tank was hit by a rocket and he was killed along with his crew.

It was barely four years ago. It must be incredibly difficult to talk about it – let alone write about it. “It’s always through writing that I understand what happens to me,” Grossman says softly. “This is the way I understand the world, and it was . . . ” He pauses. Suddenly the room in the offices of his London publisher, Random House, seems very quiet. “It wasn’t easy, to say the least,” he concludes. “The biggest feeling when something like that happens to you is a feeling of exile from everything that you’ve known before. Nothing is taken for granted. Nothing. Suddenly the whole basis of our life is gone – we can only look back at the previous reality. We are no longer there. And to go back – to write, and to invent, to find energies to invent people, and to insist on the accuracy of words – sometimes it seemed stupid. The whole world collapses, and I insist on finding this word? Stupid.”

In a strange way, however, To the End of the Land was an easier book to return to than a less personal book might have been. “I wanted, in this book, to describe our reality of anxiety, of hopelessness, of deep fear for our loved ones. It is an attempt to maintain the wholeness of life and the routine of a family, with all the tenderness and the warmth and the caring that is in a family, amidst the brutality of the situation.” It took Grossman five years to finish the novel. Then he wrote some children’s books and a children’s opera. He also wrote a number one hit single whose lyric he crafted out of a set of rhyming bumper stickers. A hip-hop septet by the name of Hadag Nahash took it on – and it took Israel by storm. “It gave everyone the whole Israeli-ness in a nutshell,” he says, with a grin. “Because you can see everything that happens in our society in our bumper stickers. The Messianism, the fanaticism, the extremes – but the idealism, also.”

At 600 pages, To the End of the Landtakes a more leisurely approach to much of the same material. At the centre of the story is Ora, a middle-aged woman who has been planning to go on a hike with her son, Ofer, on his release from military service.

Instead, Ofer unexpectedly volunteers for an extra tour of duty. Maddened by fear for his safety, his mother decides to go on the hike anyway. Her desperate logic runs as follows: if someone from the army comes to the door to give her bad news about Ofer, and she isn’t there, then they can’t deliver the death blow. And if they can’t deliver it, then he won’t really be dead. On impulse she drags along an ex-boyfriend, Avram, who has never met her son. As they walk she recreates Ofer in words, building up a multidimensional picture of the boy at every stage of his development.

That’s the gist of it. The beauty is in the detail. There are sub-plots which involve – entangle – the estranged husband and the ex-boyfriend. There are breathtaking setpieces, not least the scene in which Ora accompanies Ofer to the army camp, driven by a Palestinian taxi driver who has been a family friend for years. There are observations of daily life so vivid you can hear the kids laughing and the adults arguing, taste the pine nut-studded rye bread dipped in walnut pesto. There are breathtaking descriptions of the landscapes through which the reluctant hikers pass.

And running through it all is the relentless misery of war, exploding and torturing and messing everything up so badly that you think it has to stop. Surely it has to stop? But like the path, which winds up and down mountains and past memorials to dead soldiers and into thorny thickets, it never does.

It is, Grossman admits, difficult for peace activists not to get disheartened in the face of the increasing polarisation of opinion within Israel and in the wider world. A recent boost, however, has come in the shape of his winning the German Book Trade Peace Prize, to be presented at the Frankfurt Book Fair next month. “I’ll have to wear a tie,” he grumbles mildly. “But it’s important, especially when the power of the peace campaign in Israel is so weak and it’s so unpopular to have opinions like mine. From the reaction I got from people on my side, they also get some empowerment from this prize – and we need it. We are really a small, small minority.”

As for his future as a writer, Grossman is currently working on what he calls his “new thing”. It may be poetry, it may be prose, it may be for adults or for children. He, too, is on a kind of Israel Trail. Where it will take him, he really doesn’t know – but it doesn’t worry him unduly. “I love long processes,” he says. “I love books that take me three, four, five years to write. That way the book changes me, and I change the book. Books have this ability to crack you down – this is why we write them, I think. They are a vehicle for us to dismantle ourselves and recompose ourselves in a new way.”

To the End of the Landby David Grossman is published by Jonathan Cape, €25

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