Reviews

David Grossman, To the End of the Land

Featured in the following “Best of 2010″ lists:

Selected Reviews:

  • Toronto Star: “To the End of the Land: David Grossman’s Masterpiece” (Stephen Finucan)
  • NPR: “‘To The End’ A Solemn Exploration of Israeli Identity” (John Powers, Fresh Air)
  • Washington Times: “Book Review: To the End of the Land” (Carol Herman)
  • Washington Post: “Mother tries to stay ahead of grief in David Grossman’s ‘To the End of the Land’” (Donna Rifkind)

“…All these delicate echoes of reality join forces to power this novel, Grossman’s most authoritative since his 1989 tour de force, “See Under: Love.” (It’s further enhanced by Jessica Cohen’s brilliantly colloquial translation.) A desperate book that somehow does not cause despair, a book about death that stubbornly insists on life, “To the End of the Land,” like all great literature, is an act of generosity, opening itself to every human possibility….”

  • Jewish Review of Books: “Love and War” (Alan Mintz)
  • Seattle Times: “‘To the End of the Land’: A mother’s grief and a country’s corrosive burden” (Ellen Emry Heltzel)
  • Los Angeles Times: “Book Review: To the End of the Land by David Grossman” (Akiva Gottlieb)
  • The New Republic: “In the Name of the Mother” (Robert Alter)

“…Since Grossman’s language is so supple and so resonant, let me say at once that Jessica Cohen has done a remarkable job in rendering it in English. She beautifully captures the evocativeness with which the Hebrew is used to describe landscapes, feelings, and bodily sensations; the vivid colloquial register that she creates for the extensive dialogues is exactly right; and she demonstrates great resourcefulness in inventing English equivalents for the witty wordplay in the Hebrew….”

“…The complex erotics of their story, and of the love-triangle between Ora, Avram and Ilan, is one of the strongest aspects of the book; as is the deft precision of Grossman’s depiction of the land – beautifully rendered in Jessica Cohen’s translation – that veers, along with the rise and fall of Ora’s moods, from lush to desolate…”

“…few translators have ever conveyed the powerful lyricism of a contemporary Hebrew novel with such unflagging acumen and aesthetic insight as does translator Jessica Cohen in her magisterial rendering….”


Yael Hedaya, Eden

  • The Forward: “Misery Would Love Some Company: Yael Hedaya Turns Eden Into ‘A Real Estate Amusement Park’” (Gordon Haber)
  • Jerusalem Post: “Bookmark: ‘The bubble is a part of Israel’” (Akin Ajayi)
  • MostlyFiction.com: “Review: Eden by Yael Hedaya” (Bonnie Brody)

“…Eden’s translator, Jessica Cohen, does a stunning job. The book flows without awkwardness or hesitation…”

David Grossman, Writing in the Dark

  • The Complete Review: “Writing in the Dark by David Grossman” (M.A. Orthofer)
  • Buffalo News: “Israeli novelist takes his best shots ‘In the Dark’” (Mark Shechner)

“…A most able translation into English by Jessica Cohen presents him as a master of the colloquial. He is a writer for the world stage, and the world has much need of him…”

Amir Gutfreund, The World a Moment Later

  • Seattle Times: “See the world — by book” (Michael Upchurch)

“…Cohen, as she did in “Our Holocaust,” makes the book read as though English were Gutfreund’s native tongue….”

Tom Segev, 1967: Israel, the War, and the Year that Transformed the Middle East

  • Bloomberg: “Six-Day War, in Revisionist History, Was Provoked by Israelis” (David Rosenberg)
  • New York Times: “Peace for land” (David Margolick)
  • The Forward: “Six Days, 40 Years of Controversy” (Gal Beckerman)

Amir Gutfreund, Our Holocaust

  • Selected as one of the Seattle Times’ best books of 2006
  • Selected by Barnes & Noble for their 2006 “Discover Great New Writers” list
  • Kirkus Reviews: “Our Holocaust by Amir Gutfreund”
  • Seattle Times: “First Novels: Deconstructing the Family” (Michael Upchurch)

Yael Hedaya, Accidents

  • The Atlantic: “New Fiction” (Joseph O’Neil)
  • The Forward: “Writing a Rarity: The Happy Love Story” (Jenifer Berman)

David Grossman, Her Body Knows (published in the UK as Lovers and Strangers)

  • Long-listed for the 2006 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize
  • The Guardian: “Written on the Body” (Samir el-Youssef)
  • The Independent: “The True Lies of Love” (Elena Lappin)

“…Grossman stalks his characters into the deepest corners of their souls. In Jessica Cohen’s masterfully precise translation of his filigree prose, the first story unfolds with painstaking slowness…”

  • Village Voice: “Bend of the Affair: Grossman Navigates Love’s Lost Highways” (Amy Farley)

Comments are closed.