We met the writer in Turin, at the Salone del Libro. It turned into a long conversation in which he spoke about morning walks, his past in radio, the Meridiani series, and the editor he has worked with for forty years.
We meet David Grossman, the Israeli writer translated into dozens of languages, one of the most prominent left-wing voices critical of Netanyahu’s government, on a May morning in Turin. Grossman is in Italy to promote the publication of the Meridiano volume dedicated to him by Mondadori, something like an Oscar for a lifetime achievement.
The interview takes place in the hotel adjacent to the Book Fair. Grossman receives us in a secluded meeting room on the hotel’s upper floor. He has just finished a video call, speaks softly, drinks still water, wears jeans and a blue casual shirt. He looks older than his seventy-two years, almost fragile, until he starts speaking.
How are you? Are you happy to be in Italy? Do you come often?
I’m doing fairly well, thank you. I’m always happy to come to Italy. Lately I come less often, with everything happening in Israel, but I try to return every three months if I can.
I read in the introduction to your Meridiano that just before getting married, in 1976, you took a ten-week road trip from Finland to Brindisi. What was Italy like in the mid-1970s?
It wasn’t the refined, sophisticated country it has become today. It was a very rural place, which surprised me quite a bit. There were a lot of people devoted to what I call the cult of balagan, in Hebrew, “chaos.” Yes, there was a lot of chaos everywhere. I immediately felt at home in that balagan. It was a very clear feeling, impossible to ignore, warm, welcoming. I liked it very much.
Many people have probably already told you how prestigious it is to be published in the Meridiani series. Were you involved in the curatorial process, or was it already decided when they contacted you?
I was involved to some extent. When the decision to dedicate a Meridiano to me had already been made at the top level, I spoke with someone on the editorial team. They asked me a few questions; they were very collaborative. I trusted their taste, their approach. I think the aim of the publisher was to show the diversity of my work: the novels, children’s books, essays, plays, all the different facets of my career.
You started working for Israeli national radio at nine. Were you a child star, a prodigy, or was it common at the time to become famous in primary school?
I should take a few steps back. There was this radio quiz programme in Israel covering general knowledge. One day they announced an episode devoted to Sholem Aleichem, a writer I had a special relationship with. When I was eight, my father came into my room and gave me a small, light book of his, Tevye the Dairyman, saying: “Keep it, David. This tells what life was like in that place.”
In Hebrew, “that place” (eretz sham) means the Shoah.
I took the book and sat in a corner reading it obsessively. There was something special in my father’s expression when he gave it to me, as if he too had become a child for a moment. The book describes Jewish life in the diaspora, before the Shoah, relations with non-Jews, pogroms, things I knew nothing about regarding my father’s childhood before he moved to Palestine in 1936.
I was stunned. It was a new world for me, like a child discovering Harry Potter today…the language, the anecdotes, the biographies of places.
When Israeli radio announced a Sholem Aleichem quiz, I went to my parents and said: “I want to take part, I’m an expert.” They laughed at me: “Come on, you’re just a child.” But I insisted: “No, I know Aleichem. Dad gave me the book.”
They wouldn’t let me go. They thought I would make a fool of myself. So I left the house and, for the first time in my life, I bought a postcard. I followed the radio instructions, wrote my address, and three or four weeks later a letter arrived from Israeli national radio saying they wanted to test me.
My parents nearly fainted. It was as if Ben-Gurion himself had said: “Give me your child.”
In the end I passed all the tests. I had an excellent memory as a child. Not anymore, unfortunately.
A bit like Momik in See Under: Love.
Exactly. And these radio executives began asking increasingly tough questions. They had this child in front of them who knew as much as an adult and might even win the prize, about 110 dollars.
I answered everything. Then, somewhat perplexed, they made me an offer I couldn’t refuse: I had to sit in the studio during the quiz, and if any contestant didn’t know the answer, I would step in.
I accepted. I was a very ambitious child. When someone got it wrong, I didn’t wait for the presenter. I jumped in.
And that’s how a decades-long career began.
Yes, that was just the beginning. The executives realised they could use me for radio dramas, at the time children often played female roles. Then I started doing interviews, more in-depth shows. It changed my life.
Suddenly I was thrown into a magical world: technicians, journalists, taxis taking me to the most important people in Israel: actors, footballers. I worked at Israeli national radio for twenty-eight years, until I was fired.
Why?
I had political views on the occupied territories and on the legitimacy of a Palestinian state that differed from my superiors.
I read that around that time you won a prize that allowed you to stop working and focus entirely on writing.
Yes, it still exists. It’s a grant that allows you to write for a year without worrying about bills. That’s when my full-time writing career began, in the mid-1980s.
Many of your books are collective narratives, multiple voices that eventually reach a kind of compromise, usually driven by the best intentions. In an age dominated by social media, is it still possible to find synthesis among billions of individual perspectives? Can we think of human beings as a single homogeneous collective?
For me, as a writer, the greatest challenge is to find as many voices as possible. My creative process is to tell the same story from different perspectives.
I believe our lives are enriched by the plurality of voices that describe them, which is precisely what makes those voices feel threatening or anxiety-inducing for some people. For a writer, it’s a joy. It’s paradise.
Each of us has our own symbolic expressions, our recurring stories. That’s the beauty of language.
One of the biggest challenges I faced, for example, was writing from a woman’s perspective. It is difficult, you have to stop resisting the woman within yourself. There is a child inside us, silenced selves, and at the same time we are always the “other” for someone else.
While writing To the End of the Land, I got stuck on Ora, the protagonist. I couldn’t move forward. In a moment of paranoia, I sat down and wrote her a letter: Dear Ora, why are you like this? Why won’t you give in?
After that, a whole world opened up. I realised how foolish I had been. It wasn’t her who had to yield to me, it was me who had to yield to her. From that point on, I just had to step aside and let the story move.
How did you feel when See Under Love became your first global success?
I was completely surprised (laughs). And I still am. Every time it feels impossible that it’s happening to me.
What’s the greatest satisfaction of your career so far?
Mmm…
Apart from being published in the Meridiani, of course…
Well, being included in a Meridiano is something to be truly proud of. I only regret my parents are not here. They would have been immensely proud.
But I think the greatest “medal” of my career is the second part of See Under Love, the one about Bruno Schulz, the Jewish writer…
The salmon!
Exactly. That chapter was the least understood and least appreciated part of the book that made me famous. I also endured resentment from readers, silly questions like “why do you write so complicated?”
But I remember how I felt writing it: it was like a storm passing through me. I couldn’t stop it. I just had to step aside, humbly, and wait for it to pass or evolve. I don’t know. It was a physical pleasure. I felt I was doing the right thing.
You’ve worked with the same editor for forty years, since your early magazine pieces. Is that true?
Yes, my beloved Menachem Peri. I spoke to him just yesterday. I’m finishing another book, so I warned him to get ready. I think he’s reading it now.
Oh! What is it about? A novel, an essay?
It’s the story of a father and a son, but I prefer not to say more for now.
Do you think you would have become a writer if you had been born somewhere else?
Who knows. It’s easier to be a writer in Israel, there are so many subjects waiting to be explored. Every person over seventy-five has a Shoah story, incredible narratives, people walking around carrying painful, dramatic histories. Just listen to them and you find literary gold.
Miraculous survivals. Wars. Death. The mystery of diaspora and persecution throughout Jewish history. All this suffering. In writing, I try to find poetry in that drama.
In many countries, people live quiet, stable lives, maybe a major issue once a decade. We carry the enormous weight of everything that came before us.
Sometimes I would like to write a simple story that begins with A and ends with Z, like children’s stories.
In recent days I’ve read a lot of your interviews, and they all have one thing in common: half about literature, half about politics. Do you like that? Is it laziness on the part of journalists? Are you tired of answering for your government’s actions?
And here you are doing the same thing…
I swear this is the only political question.
When questions become repetitive, of course I get bored. But I’m lucky, most people who interview me are interested in my writing. They’ve read the books.
Talking about politics is less stimulating for me. We’ve been trapped in the same situation, with variations, for more than a century. It’s exhausting.
I almost feel obliged to fight clichés in political discourse. The moment you describe a situation, you start with a formal version of events, and soon you realise there is a story behind the official story, and if you go into that, you find millions of subplots… oh, I think I’m talking too much.
In the introduction to your Meridiano, there is a line of yours: “It is possible to confront contradictions when dealing with a person and not a stereotype, a cliché. You become more human.” Does this philosophy stand a chance of becoming mainstream, or are social media inevitably pushing us toward polarisation?
Even newspapers now use simplified language, they don’t try to describe the world in all its shades and dimensions. It’s easier to present a single point of view.
The role of writers and journalists should not be to assert themselves, but to recreate themselves.
Every relationship risks becoming frozen. In reality, it is far more dynamic. If you allow yourself to see reality through multiple perspectives, you grow. That applies to everyone, spouses, parents, children, teachers.
We all build official, reassuring languages for ourselves, but that’s a mistake. The story we tell is always partial. We should question ourselves much more.
We constantly seek shelters, self-confirming certainties.
When I write, it’s the opposite. At the beginning I need fixed structures, but after a while I enter a dialogue with fears and desires. And I feel better.
What does your writing routine look like?
I write whenever I can. If you put me in a blender, I’d still write.
My wife and I wake up very early, at quarter to six, and walk three or four kilometres. We live in a village outside Jerusalem, ten minutes from the city.
Then we come back, have breakfast, and I start working in my room, or rather, I walk in circles. I’ve done this for years. My wife says I leave trails of fire on the carpet.
I write constantly, whenever I can. I don’t need a routine.
Is it still possible to write literature with an optimistic view of the future? Can books comfort us, or do they mostly remind us the end is near?
The fact that we are still writing, in times like these, is already an act of optimism.
This world is becoming a container of catastrophes. And certainly, Mr Trump is not the least of those responsible. I think Trump embodies many of the problems of our era.
His attitude toward morality, truth, and facts is disgraceful. He has shown that there are not enough sanctions against violence.
I am very skeptical and worried about what lies ahead. I think we are only at the beginning of what Trump will impose.
It is time for young people to start fighting for their future. My generation is powerless, we cannot offer much. But young people… even you, I’m sorry to say…
I’m afraid I’m not that young anymore.
You should still do something. If young people, with their energy, do not fight for the future and for the right values, they will become collaborators in this destructive, offensive, racist approach. Or worse, victims.
I believe the younger generations have a responsibility to act. If they don’t, we are all finished.
The success of this series is beyond dispute. But anyone who has read the comic it is based on knows that, in the end, it is a missed opportunity — a wasted chance to do something genuinely transformative for television and the superhero genre.