Mothers of Soldiers in Israeli Literature: David Grossman’s To the End of the Land

This article addresses the national-political functions of mainstream Hebrew literature, focusing on three questions: What are soldiers’ mothers in the canonical literature “allowed” to think, feel, and do, and what is considered transgressive? How has the presence of soldiers’ mothers in Israeli public life changed since the 1982 Lebanon War? At the center of the discussion is David Grossman’s novel To the End of the Land (2008). I argue that the author posits “the flight from bad tidings” as both a maternal strategy and the author’s psychopoetic strategy. This article examines the cultural and gendered significance of the analogy between the act of flight and the act of writing that Grossman advances in his epilogue.