More Than I Love My Life: LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE

Description

From the winner of the International Booker Prize and one of the finest writers at work today, an epic and deeply moving novel about the legacy of war and trauma on three generations of women On a kibbutz in Israel in 2008, Gili, along with the entire community, is celebrating the 90th birthday of her grandmother Vera, the adored matriarch of a sprawling and tight-knit family. Onto the scene enters Nina- the iron-willed daughter who rejected Vera's care; and the absent mother who abandoned Gili when she was still a baby. Nina's return to the family after years of silence precipitates the gripping, heart-wrenching story that unfolds, in which mother, daughter and grandmother are forced to confront the past head-on. Together with Rafael - father to Gili, lover to Nina and step-son to Vera - the three women embark on an epic journey to the desolate island of Goli Otok, formerly part of Yugoslavia. It was here, five decades earlier, that Vera was held and tortured as a political prisoner. And it is here that the three women will finally come to terms with the terrible moral dilemma that Vera faced, and that permanently altered the course of their lives. More Than I Love My Life is a grand-scale and sweeping story about the power of love and loving with courage. A novel driven by faith in humanity even in our darkest moments, it asks us to confront our deepest held beliefs about a woman's duty to herself and to her children.

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.

More Than I Love My Life... is a profound testament to the emotional power of fiction and shows why some critics regard Grossman as a candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature. -- Max Liu * Financial Times * Immaculately translated by Jessica Cohen, this is another extraordinary novel from Grossman, a book as beautiful and sad as anything you'll read this year. -- Alex Preston * Observer * Unforgettable . . . This adds another remarkable achievement to Grossman's long list. * Publisher's Weekly *Starred Review* * In More Than I Love My Life he [Grossman] tells a sombre and affecting tale... [a] delicately crafted novel, crisply translated from the Hebrew by Jessica Cohen. -- Houman Barekat * Sunday Times * [Grossman gives] vivid voice to each of the characters as they navigate their pain, both present and past... Grossman's 12 previous novels and five volumes of non-fiction have brought him renown on both sides of the Atlantic. This book will earn him more. * Economist *