Falling Out of Time

Following the magisterial To the End of the Land, the universally acclaimed Israeli author brings us an incandescent fable of parental grief-slim, elemental, a powerfully distilled experience of understanding and acceptance, and of art's triumph over death.In Falling Out of Time, David Grossman has created a genre-defying drama-part play, part prose, pure poetry-to tell the story of bereaved parents setting out to reach their lost children. It begins in a small village, in a kitchen, where a man announces to his wife that he is leaving, embarking on a journey in search of their dead son. The man-called simply the "Walking Man"-paces in ever-widening circles around the town. One after another, all manner of townsfolk fall into step with him (the Net Mender, the Midwife, the Elderly Math Teacher, even the Duke), each enduring his or her own loss. The walkers raise questions of grief and bereavement: Can death be overcome by an intensity of speech or memory?...