David Grossman

In 2015, Grossman withdrew his candidacy for the Israel Prize for Literature after Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu tried to remove two of the judging panel whom he claimed were "anti-Zionist". He was awarded the prize in 2018.

He addressed the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in his 2008 novel, To the End of the Land. Since that book's publication he has written a children's book, an opera for children and several poems. His 2014 book, Falling Out of Time, deals with the grief of parents in the aftermath of their children's death. In 2017, he was awarded the Man Booker International Prize in conjunction with his frequent collaborator and translator, Jessica Cohen, for his novel A Horse Walks Into a Bar. In 2018, he was awarded the Israel Prize for literature.

Grossman's father was a bus driver, then a librarian, and it was through him that David – "a reading child" – was able to build up an interest in literature, which would later become his career. Grossman recalled, "He gave me many things, but what he mostly gave me was Sholem Aleichem." Sholem Aleichem, who was born in Ukraine, is one of the greatest writers in Yiddish, though he is now best known as the man whose stories were the inspiration for Fiddler on the Roof. At age 9, Grossman won a national competition on knowledge of the works of Sholem Aleichem, and subsequently worked as a child actor for the national radio. He continued working for Israel Broadcasting for nearly 25 years.

In 2010 Grossman, his wife, and her family attended demonstrations against the spread of Israeli settlements. While attending weekly demonstrations in Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem against Jewish settlers taking over houses in Palestinian neighbourhoods, he was assaulted by police. When asked by a reporter for The Guardian about how a renowned writer could be beaten, he replied: "I don't know if they know me at all."

Two days later, Grossman's 20-year-old son Uri, a Staff Sergeant in the 401st Armored Brigade, was killed in southern Lebanon when his tank was hit by an anti-tank missile shortly before the ceasefire came into effect. Grossman explained that the death of his son did not change his opposition to Israel's policy towards the Palestinians. Although Grossman had carefully avoided writing about politics, in his stories, if not his journalism, the death of his son prompted him to deal with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in greater detail. This appeared in his 2008 book To The End of the Land.

Grossman lives in Mevasseret Zion on the outskirts of Jerusalem. He is married to Michal Grossman, a child psychologist. They had three children, Yonatan, Ruthi, and Uri. Uri was a tank-commander in the Israel Defense Forces, and was killed in action in the 2006 Lebanon War. Uri's life was later celebrated in Grossman's book Falling Out of Time.

Initially supportive of Israel's action during the 2006 Lebanon War on the grounds of self-defense, on August 10, 2006, he and fellow authors Amos Oz and A.B. Yehoshua held a press conference at which they strongly urged the government to agree to a ceasefire that would create the basis for a negotiated solution, saying: "We had a right to go to war. But things got complicated. ... I believe that there is more than one course of action available."

Two months after his son's death, Grossman addressed a crowd of 100,000 Israelis who had gathered to mark the anniversary of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. He denounced Ehud Olmert's government for a failure of leadership and he argued that reaching out to the Palestinians was the best hope for progress in the region:

Grossman studied philosophy and theater at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. After university he started working in radio, where he'd once been a child actor. He eventually became an anchor on Kol Yisrael, Israel's national broadcasting service. In 1988 he was sacked for refusing to bury the news that the Palestinian leadership had declared its own state and conceded Israel's right to exist.

In 1971, Grossman began his national service working in military intelligence. Although he was in the army when the Yom Kippur War broke out in 1973, he saw no action.

David Grossman (Hebrew: דויד גרוסמן ‎; born January 25, 1954) is an Israeli author. His books have been translated into more than 30 languages, and have won numerous prizes.