To the End of the Land
by David Grossman, translated from the Hebrew by Jessica Cohen
Vintage, 651 pp., $15.95 (paper)
There is a striking difference in register between the titles of the Hebrew and the English versions of David Grossman’s lengthy, ambitious novel. The portentous literary title in English, “To the End of the Land,” stakes an epic claim; it has the grandiloquence that reminds one of titles like Gone with the Wind or From Here to Eternity. By contrast, the simplicity of its Hebrew title—“A Woman Running from the News”—announces another novel altogether, a realist novel of contemporary life, the story of a particular person at a particular moment.
