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David Grossman · b. 1954 · Israel

Originally Ayen Erekh: Ahava (Hebrew) · translated by Betsy Rosenberg

Why it matters

A child of Holocaust survivors tries, across four wildly different narrative styles, to imagine his way into the horror his parents never spoke about. Grossman's breakthrough: formally daring, emotionally unbearable, and by many accounts his masterpiece.

At a glance

Four formally distinct sections, including an encyclopedia and a fish's perspective, resist easy unity.