The Smile Of The Lamb

Description

The first Israeli novel written about the occupation of the West Bank, by one of the most influential writers of his generation. Uri and Katzman are Israeli soldiers occupying a Palestinian village in the West Bank. Uri is idealistic and full of hope, feels the injustice of the occupation keenly, and becomes close to Khilmi, the village storyteller. Katzman on the other hand is 'a contracted muscle' - he has taught himself not to feel. And Shosh, Uri's wife, daughter of liberal immigrant parents and juvenile psychiastrist, is succumbing to her own struggles with power and truth. When Khilmi's adopted son is killed in a 'security operation' and when Uri discovers how far deception and injustice have penetrated into his own life, their reactions are drastic and unforseen.

David Grossman is the bestselling author of numerous works, which have been translated into thirty-six languages. His most recent novel, A Horse Walks into a Bar, was awarded the International Man Booker Prize 2017, and shortlisted for the TLS-Risa Domb/Porjes Prize 2019. Grossman is also the recipient of the French Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and the 2010 Frankfurt Peace Prize.

An extraordinary achievement...moving, many-layered, powerful, yet written with beautiful delicacy of touch, is a work of redemption... Combining the compassionate wisdom of the moralist with a true artist's creative imagination, this book deserves the widest possible audience * Indepdendent * Bold, grand, mad, an astonishing meditation on art, religion, love, politics and war, despatched in language which is funny, ferocious and enraptured * Observer * A courageous novel, the first attempt by an Israeli author of the post-1967 generation to come to terms with the consequences of the Occupation, to articulate how 'the conqueror is also the conquered, and injustice has teeth in its tail' * Guardian * Extreme, enormous, almost embarrassingly good, a first novel whose very last page somehow fuses together the political and spiritual currents running through modern day Israel * Time Out * At once sensitive, humane, elegiac and devoid of optimism, save a vague faith in love * Sunday Times *