這本原文厚達 600 頁的堂皇鉅著,一推出即席捲以色列的暢銷排行榜,被公認是格羅斯曼至今文學生涯的顛峰代表作,隨後迅速售出美國、英國、德國、荷蘭、義大利、西班牙、中國等二十餘國版權。2010 年九月,《直到大地盡頭》英譯本問世,立刻衝上紐約時報、獨立書商協會、洛杉磯時報等排行榜,並入選亞馬遜書店、邦諾書店、西雅圖時報、華盛頓郵報、紐約客、經濟學人雜誌等媒體的年度選書。
同年底,格羅斯曼獲頒德國圖書業的年度和平獎,在法蘭克福書展上頒發,更被 Foreign Policy 選為全球百大思考家,與美國總統歐巴馬、德國總理默克爾、比爾蓋茲、巴菲特、賈伯斯、湯瑪斯‧佛里曼、新科諾貝爾文學獎得主尤薩、中國青年作家韓寒並列。
2011年美國總統歐巴馬也選擇此書作為他的暑期讀物,跳脫以往暑期讀物不外乎偉人傳記的窠臼。
《直到大地盡頭》是一個關於「愛」的故事,寫母親對兒子的愛、男人與女人、男人與男人之間的愛和友誼,寫以色列生命經驗的所有面向,也寫盡了一個女人、一個家庭和一整個國家和民族的憂傷。在面對生命的不可預期,包括戰爭、背叛、失落,透過不斷再述、回憶與寫作,美好的事物得以永恆,而我們也才有勇氣,面對未來。
Ora, amiddle-aged mother, is on the verge of celebrating her son Ofer's release from Israeli army service when he returns to the front for a major offensive. In a fit of preemptive grief and magical thinking, she sets out for a hike in the Galilee, leaving no forwarding information for the 'notifiers' who might darken her door with the worst possible news.
Recently estranged from her husband Ilan, she drags along an unlikely companion: their former best friend and her former lover Avram, once a brilliant artistic spirit. Avram served in the army alongside Ilan when they were young, but their lives were forever changed one weekend when the two jokingly had Ora draw lots to see which of them would get the few days' leave being offered by their commander - a chance act that sent Avram into Egpyt and the Yom Kippur War, where he was brutally tortured as a POW. In the aftermath, a virtual hermit, he refused to keep in touch with the family and has never met the boy.
Now, as Ora and Avram sleep out in the hills, ford rivers and cross valleys, avoiding all news from the front, she gives him the gift of Ofer, word by word; she supplies the whole story of her motherhood, a retelling that keeps Ofer very much alive for Ora and for the reader, and opens Avram to human bonds undreamed of in his broken world.
Grossman's rich imagining of a family in love and crisis makes for one of the great antiwar novels of our time.