More Than I Love My Life

INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE NOMINEE - A remarkable novel of suffering, love, and healing--the story of three generations of women on an unlikely journey to a Croatian island and a secret that needs to be told--from the internationally best-selling author of To the End of the Land

＂A magnificent book ... The way Grossman writes about these regions is unique, with a deep understanding of our experience.＂ --Josip Mlakic, Express (Croatia)

More Than I Love My Life is the story of three strong women: Vera, age ninety; her daughter, Nina; and her granddaughter, Gili, who at thirty-nine is a filmmaker and a wary consumer of affection. A bitter secret divides each mother and daughter pair, though Gili--abandoned by Nina when she was just three--has always been close to her grandmother.

With Gili making the arrangements, they travel together to Goli Otok, a barren island off the coast of Croatia, where Vera was imprisoned and tortured for three years as a young wife after she refused to betray her husband and denounce him as an enemy of the people. This unlikely journey--filtered through the lens of Gili’s camera, as she seeks to make a film that might help explain her life--lays bare the intertwining of fear, love, and mercy, and the complex overlapping demands of romantic and parental passion.

More Than I Love My Life was inspired by the true story of one of David Grossman’s longtime confidantes, a woman who, in the early 1950s, was held on the notorious Goli Otok (＂the Adriatic Alcatraz＂). With flashbacks to the stalwart Vera protecting what was most precious on the wretched rock where she was held, and Grossman’s fearless examination of the human heart, this swift novel is a thrilling addition to the oeuvre of one of our greatest living novelists, whose revered moral voice continues to resonate around the world.

DAVID GROSSMAN was born in Jerusalem. He is the author of numerous works of fiction, nonfiction, and children’s literature. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker and has been translated into more than forty languages. He is the recipient of many prizes, including the French Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, the Buxtehuder Bulle in Germany, Rome’s Premio per la Pace e l’Azione Umanitaria, the Premio Ischia International Award for Journalism, Israel’s Emet Prize, the Man Booker International Prize, and the Albatross Prize given by the Günter Grass Foundation. He lives in Jerusalem.

JESSICA COHEN shared the 2017 Man Booker International Prize with David Grossman, for her translation of A Horse Walks into a Bar, and has translated major Israeli writers including Amos Oz, Etgar Keret, Ronit Matalon, and Nir Baram.