by דויד גרוסמן
First published 1991
Uri serves as a young Israeli soldier in the occupied West Bank, carrying the weight of his idealistic beliefs into a landscape where they crumble daily. His wife works at a juvenile psychiatric center, treating damaged children while her husband navigates the moral complexities of military occupation. The couple believes they can maintain their humanity while serving the machinery of conflict, but the Palestinian territories demand sacrifices neither anticipated. Personal convictions collide with historical forces beyond their control. Uri discovers that good intentions offer no protection against the brutal realities of occupation. His marriage strains under pressures that extend far beyond their relationship. The psychiatric center becomes a mirror for the larger trauma surrounding them. Grossman places these characters at the center of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where individual desires become casualties of larger political forces. The story reveals how ordinary people pay extraordinary costs when caught between competing claims to the same land.
Genres: fiction, drama, literary-fiction, contemporary
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, personal-vs-political
Setting: Israel, West Bank
Period: 20th-century
325 pages · Hardcover · Farrar Straus Giroux
Content warnings: colonialism, war