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  • Published: 1 November 2010
  • ISBN: 9780099552291
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 336
  • RRP: $40.00

The Smile Of The Lamb



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.

  • Published: 1 November 2010
  • ISBN: 9780099552291
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 336
  • RRP: $40.00

About the author

David Grossman

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.

Also by David Grossman

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Praise for The Smile Of The Lamb

His fiction is earnest, sympathetic, human and highly readable

Irish Times

Grossman has made a habit of peeling away the camouflage that obfuscates Israel's more painful wounds

Independent

From its very first pages one is aware of Grossman's potential range and originality...Khilmi, an Arab storyteller, is the novel's great imaginative narrative achievement... What a rare pleasure to read a novel in which the novelist's narrative and ideas are so gripping, they are worth arguing about! Here we have authentic talent

Washington Post

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

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

At once sensitive, humane, elegiac and devoid of optimism, save a vague faith in love

Sunday Times

Masterful irony and passion... the sustained poetic intensity of many passages is impressive

Evening Standard

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