MEVASSERET ZION, Israel -- In the middle of David Grossman's latest novel, ''To the End of the Land,'' now out in English, the main character, a middle-aged Israeli Everywoman named Ora whose son has gone off to battle with the Israeli Army, stands with her ex-lover atop Mount Meron in northern Israel and looks out at the Hula Valley. She realizes,...
TO THE END OF THE LAND By David Grossman Translated by Jessica Cohen 576 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $26.95 In the introduction to his 2003 collection of journalism, ''Death as a Way of Life,'' the Israeli novelist David Grossman wrote: ''The daily reality in which I live surpasses anything I could imagine, and it seeps into my deepest parts.'' In a note...

''To our joy or to our misery, the contingencies of reality have a great influence on what we write,'' says Natalia Ginzburg in her book ''It's Hard to Talk About Yourself,'' in the chapter in which she discusses her life and her writing in the wake of personal disaster. It is hard to talk about yourself, and so before I describe my current writing...