The long walk

In this long and fascinating novel, Ora, an early- middle-aged Israeli woman, walks for days through Galilee to escape the ‘Notifiers’, the officers she fears will come to her door to inform her of the death of Ofer, her soldier son, at the hands of Palestinians.

In this long and fascinating novel, Ora, an early- middle-aged Israeli woman, walks for days through Galilee to escape the ‘Notifiers’, the officers she fears will come to her door to inform her of the death of Ofer, her soldier son, at the hands of Palestinians.

David Grossman, one of Israel’s leading writers, relates in a note at the end of this novel that while he was writing it he discussed how it was progressing on the phone with his soldier-son Uri, who would ask him about the characters, ‘What did you do to them this week?’ ‘At the time, I had the feeling — or rather, a wish — that the book I was writing would protect him.’ When the book was nearly finished, Uri was killed in action. Grossman writes, ‘I went back to the book … what changed above all, was the echo of the reality in which the final draft was finished.’

Before her flight from possible news of Ofer’s death, Ora badgers her ex-lover, Avram, into going with her. He is also the ex-best friend of her estranged husband, Ilan, who has gone to South America with her other son.

Avram, always pretty peculiar, is damaged in mind and body. Years before, he was freed from his captivity in Egypt after the 1973 Yom Kippur war; suspected of being an army intelligence officer, he had been tortured, buried up to his face and raped. Ora and her husband cared for him during his long, incomplete recovery.

After his release, Avram momentarily resumed his relationship with the married Ora; she became pregnant with the son whose death she now fears.