David Grossman: 'I know what it's like to live on with trauma'

In his new novel Life plays with me David Grossman (66) tells the gripping story of a woman who abandoned her child and braved the horrors on Croatian prison island of Goli Otok. 'She was Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf in the same person.'

Criticism

More than 20 years ago, David Grossman's phone rang. A woman by the name of Eva Panić Nahir had something to say about an article he had published in an Israeli newspaper. Grossman smiles at the memory. 'What my piece was about I don't remember, except that she thought I had not gone far enough in my criticism of the government. I did find it refreshing to be attacked for once by someone from the left, instead of - as usual - the right wing.'

The fact that a complete stranger called him out of the blue about an article was not in itself remarkable. 'Israel has an open, democratic society, where everyone is constantly calling each other on anything and everything. When I was just starting out as a writer, I was stopped on the street by people who started telling me all the things I had done wrong or wanted to know which writer had inspired me or who I had copied from. A writer is welcomed, as it were, like a new baby in the family: everyone bends over the cradle and shouts that he has Uncle Yankel's nose or Aunt Malkine's chin. When Eva called me, I was no longer a novice writer, but she felt free to say straight up what I hadn't done right.'

Hermetic love

So far, nothing special, then, until Grossman asked her where she was originally from; her peculiar accent betrayed that her cradle, like that of so many Israelis, had been elsewhere. 'She told me she was from the former Yugoslavia, from a small town in Croatia, and came from a well-to-do Jewish family. At 17, she had fallen jet-lagged in love with a non-Jewish officer in General Tito's partisan army, Rade Panić, a love so hermetic that there was hardly any room left for anything or anyone else. She did not tell me her whole life story at that time, but bits and pieces that intrigued me and with which she enticed me into follow-up conversations. So we became friends and talked about her life for 20 years, until she died in 2015, at the age of 97.'

Eva, about whom and a book and documentary had already been made, wanted Grossman to turn her life story into a novel. 'But there were other novels pulling at me that needed to be written first. Eva was patient, occasionally asking me if I had started writing about her yet. Not yet, I would reply. Every book decides for itself when it needs to be written; I feel that physically and then there is no stopping it. I had made it clear to her that it would be fiction, that I would pull her out of my imagination, make up things around her that didn't happen but could have happened. That was fine with her: "You are an artist, how could I censor your work?" '

Extreme choices

Now here it is, the novel Life plays with me, which is based on her life story. It is a gripping story of how extreme choices affect a family for three generations. The main character is Vera (based on Eva), whose husband is accused of betraying his leader Tito in the early 1950s. He commits suicide in his cell. Vera is given a choice: either she admits her husband's guilt - a lie by which she would posthumously betray him - or she remains silent and will be deported to the infamous prison island of Goli Otok. An impossible choice between betraying her dead husband or her 6-year-old living daughter Nina.

Vera's all-consuming love forces her to take the second option, and she leaves her daughter with her sister. Miraculously, Vera survives the years of torture on Goli Otok, and after her release, she and Nina leave for Israel, where they build a new life and even enter into a new marriage years later. But Nina is so devastated inside that she has no choice but to break contact with her family and abandon her daughter Gili herself as well.

A poignant story, then, of intense love and hate, of betrayal, and, ultimately, of reconciliation and forgiveness. 'Eva was a unique person,' smiles Grossman. ''I never met anyone like her. She was tough as a rock when it came to ideology, socialism, values in general. Uncompromising, incapable of compromise. At the same time, she was the sweetest, gentlest and most empathetic woman on earth. Or as Gili names it in the novel: she was Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf in one and the same person.'

Getting into the skin

With each new book, Grossman literally tries to get into the skin of his characters, to become them himself, so to speak. 'I consider that the great gift of writing. In everyday life, and certainly from a certain age, we are just one, with one face, one body, one gender, one ideology and history. While writing, that rigidity melts away.'

But stepping into the shoes of Vera and her painful past, he found it a tough and extreme experience, Grossman says. 'About the terrible choice she made regarding her daughter, we had many dicussions. Eva knew I did not agree with her choice. Yet, as a writer, I had to make the effort to seek understanding, and try to empathise with how, at some point, under enormous pressure and the agony of interrogations, she was able to make this choice. It was a decision whose consequences she spent the rest of her life trying to make up for. I greatly admire the fact that Tiana, as Eva's daughter is actually called, and she have slowly and painstakingly managed to find each other again and become mother and daughter again. That calls for exceptional generosity and generosity. It is so easy to judge. Or to say you are guilty of something just to get rid of it and avoid the deeper conversation about it.'

Living with trauma

What it is like to live on with a major trauma is something David Grossman can relate to. Recently, it was the anniversary of the death of his son Uri, 14 years ago this year. He died as a soldier during the war in Lebanon. 'I know how trauma, how loss and grief have the dangerous ability to engulf your whole personality and colour everything black, to take away the view of life beyond that trauma.

I also know the sense of time becoming entrenched in your personality, the feeling that it is always that one moment, that one minute that wants to swallow you up again and again. The tremendous strength it takes to master the gravity of pain. We carry our suffering with us, and it is hard not to let it influence your actions. The question is: how do you deal with it? Do you surrender to the crippling grief and despair, or are you able to get on with living?'

Stifling story

Vera, Nina and Gili are all in some way stuck in their past, in what has shaped them. But doesn't that apply to most people, Grossman wonders aloud. 'We all have a story about our childhood, about how we were not understood by our parents, our siblings, our friends, and that we still suffer from that. We polish that story and tell ourselves and others over and over again, as an explanation of why we are the way we are. So you get more and more stuck in that "official story"; it suffocates you, prevents you from being free and becoming yourself.

This applies, by the way, not only to individuals, but also to peoples and nations. Take the Jewish people and the Holocaust. You can't forget something like that, it's in your genes. But such a story can be a blockade to change and a better future. Nina, for example, is so obsessed with her injury throughout her life that she actually remains a 6.5-year-old child. Gili is the one who goes through the biggest change. That she finally dares to get pregnant opens a door to the future.'

Liberation

The fact that family members are finally confronting and telling each other about what they have been through leads to greater understanding and a certain liberation. With that Life plays with me also a novel about the power and importance of stories. 'They offer the chance to look at things from a different angle, to discover new points of view or nuances. To understand that although your mother treated you badly, she also had her reasons. In this way, you might come to forgiveness, or a better understanding of your own behaviour, and start to see in what ways you unconsciously emulate your parents, so that you can free yourself from them. My novel might have given Eva a new perspective on her actions, herself and her relationship with her daughter and granddaughter.'

But unfortunately, Eva Panić Nahir has been unable to read the novel. 'I find that very regrettable,' Grossman nods. 'Her daughter said she would have loved the book. As I knew her, I think so too - even the critical points about her she would have appreciated.'