One of Israel's leading writers, with major awards from France, Germany, Rome, and Britain as well as his homeland, David Grossman explores layers of personal and political drama in three generations of strong women: Vera, now 90; her daughter Nina; and Nina's daughter Gili. Though bitter secrets divide each mother and daughter, Gili has always been close to her grandmother, who raised her, and now she is making a film about the notorious Yugoslav prison on Goli Otok, where a young Vera was held and tortured for three years but would never denounce her husband as an enemy of the people. Nominated for a Booker Prize and inspired by the true story of one of Grossman's friends, the novel intertwines devotion and fear, love and mercy, and the conflicted bonds of lovers and family.

"Another extraordinary novel from Grossman, a book as beautiful and sad as anything you'll read this year…. A book of secrets wrapped within secrets … it is a love story, a story about a family and their myriad individual tragedies. But it is also about the way that the personal can never be wholly separated from the political, about the lingering wounds of history, about how violence seeps into all the dark corners of a life. It is, in the end, about Israel…. Immaculately translated by Jessica Cohen." —Observer (London)