- Person
- David Grossman
- Lived
- b. 1954
- Field
- Novelist and essayist
- From
- Israeli
The story
By 2000 David Grossman was best known abroad for demanding novels such as See Under: Love and for his reportage on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But he had also written many books for children, and he had a gift for seeing the world through young eyes. Someone to Run With, published in Hebrew that year, brought those strengths together in a fast-moving thriller set on the streets of Jerusalem.
The novel opens with Assaf, a shy, tall sixteen-year-old with a summer job at Jerusalem city hall while his parents are abroad. He is handed a stray dog, a yellow Labrador mix named Dinka, and told to find its owner. Dinka leads him across the city, and through the people he meets and the journals he finds, Assaf comes to know her owner, Tamar, a gifted sixteen-year-old singer. She has cut off her hair and gone undercover among the city's street performers, who are exploited by a criminal named Pesach, in order to rescue her brother Shai, a talented guitarist addicted to heroin. Tamar plans to bring him to a hidden cave and help him through withdrawal.
The book moves between their two stories until they meet, combining suspense with tenderness and a vivid portrait of Jerusalem's hidden underworld. It shows young people acting with courage and loyalty in a world that adults have failed to make safe, and Assaf discovers his own strength along the way.
In 2001 the novel won the Sapir Prize, then in its second year. Awarded by Mifal HaPayis, Israel's national lottery, and modelled on Britain's Booker Prize, it is the most lucrative literary prize in Israel. The English translation, published in 2003, also won the Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize for fiction in 2004, and one American reviewer called it Grossman's most entertaining book yet.
In 2006 Oded Davidoff adapted the novel into a feature film, which received twelve nominations at the Israeli Film Academy Awards, including Best Picture. The story remains one of Grossman's most accessible works and a favourite with young readers.
Why it matters
Someone to Run With has inspired young readers with a story of courage, friendship and caring for the vulnerable.
About David Grossman
Jerusalem novelist of See Under: Love and To the End of the Land, Booker International and Israel Prize winner, and a persistent moral voice for peace and empathy.
More about David Grossman
- David Grossman wrote Falling Out of Time on griefDavid Grossman's Falling Out of Time, a work of prose and verse about parents mourning their children, has been adapted for the stage many times.
- David Grossman's See Under: Love reimagined Holocaust memoryDavid Grossman's 1986 novel See Under: Love, about a boy raised among silent Holocaust survivors, became a landmark of Israeli literature about the Shoah.
- David Grossman's To the End of the Land won wide acclaimDavid Grossman's 2008 novel To the End of the Land, about a mother walking the Galilee to escape news of her soldier son, won the National Jewish Book Award and the JQ Wingate Prize.
Sources
- David Grossman Wikipedia
- Someone to Run With Wikipedia
- Sapir Prize Wikipedia
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