David Grossman beats the Booker.

To the End of the Land wins this year’s Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize, beating the winners of this year’s Booker and Costa prizes.           

“Grossman’s To the End of the Land is the great anti-war epic of our time,” said Editor of the Jewish Quarterly, Rachel Lasserson.

Commenting on the winning book Lisa Appignanesi, chair of the judging panel, said: 

“Each of the books on our short-list could have been an outstanding winner.  But in a year which brings us David Grossman’s To the End of the Land, the judges all concurred that this towering novel had to be the one.  At once magisterial and moving, this is a profoundly humane work of fiction. Grossman’s Ora is vibrantly alive in all her particularity. She will come to stand beside Emma Bovary and Anna Karenina as one of the great characters in literature”.


Former winners include Imre Kertesz, Amos Oz, Zadie Smith, WG Sebald and Oliver Sacks.


This years judging panel was Lisa Appignanesi, Daniel Glaser, Emily Kasriel and Michael Prodger.

THE 2011 SHORTLIST

·       To the End of the Land by David Grossman (Jonathan Cape)

·       The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson (Bloomsbury)     

·       The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal (Chatto)

·       The Dove Flyer by Eli Amir (Halban)

·       Trials of the Diaspora by Anthony Julius (OUP)                             

·       Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck (Portobello)     

THE WINNING BOOK

TO THE END OF THE LAND by David Grossman

Ora is about to celebrate her son Ofer's release from Israeli army service when he voluntarily rejoins his unit for a major offensive. In a fit of magical thinking, she takes off to hike in the Galilee, leaving no forwarding information for the ‘notifiers’ who might darken her door. This is comforting logic: if she cannot be told of Ofer’s death, he must remain alive.  Grossman’s rich imagining of a family in love and crisis is one of the great anti-war novels of our time.

David Grossman was born in Jerusalem on January 25, 1954 and studied philosophy and theatre at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is one of the leading Israeli writers of his generation, and the author of numerous pieces of fiction, nonfiction and children's literature. His work has been translated into 25 languages around the world.