In his essay, “Writing in the Dark,” David Grossman says, “I have a distant ally who does not know me, and together we are weaving this shapeless web, which nonetheless has immense power, the power to change a world and create a world, the power to give words to the mute and to bring about tikkun — “repair” — in the deepest, kabbalistic sense of the word.” Grossman tirelessly explores the idea of peacemaking between Israelis and Palestinians as a human, one-to-one discovery and dialogue. His fiction too wants to make repair. To The End of the Land, his remarkable 2010 novel, tells of a journey through a family’s past, a love affair between a woman and two men, and a literal hike across the country of Israel, shot through with peaceful homes and beribboned with war zones.
The novel opens in a flashback to 1967. Three Israeli teens...
