By David Grossman
The author is an Israeli who just won the Man Booker Internationa Prize for his latest book. This is a very interesting book. It is written part in poem and partly in prose. The narrator is a local official who has been tasked with documenting the activities in the village.
The book starts with an elderly man who has lost a son several years before in a street battle. Suddenly one day he decides to leave his wife and start walking around the village looking for his son. He starts to circle the town. His action also seem to inspire some changes in the behaviour of other citizens, a Cyclops who is attached to his desk, who has lost his child, a woman who is a netminder who has lost he daughter, a school teacher who also lost a chld and the village official who also lost his daughter and the Duke, the boss of the official. With the exception fo the cyclops the people start circling the city in larger circles until they encounter a wall. They hesitate at first and then start to dig in the soil until they have dug graves for themselves. They climb into these graves. But in a while they climb out. It seems that they have accepted the deaths of their loved ones.
A sad story but with beautiful language.
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