David Grossman

At the start of David Grossman’s latest book, after five years of being unable to speak about it, a man and a woman remember the moment they were told of their son’s death. “The man and woman we had been nodded farewell.” The ease of a previous life slips away from them. Until that moment, we are told, the death was like a poison sweet in the mouths of the men who came to tell them the news; they could taste it but were immune to its effects.