Sefer ha-diḳduḳ ha-penimi

by דויד גרוסמן

David Grossman, the leading Israeli novelist of his generation, showed himself in his internationally acclaimed novel, See Under: LOVE, to be a consummate artist of the inner life of the child. Now, in his most moving and accessible novel yet, he gives us the story of the greatest and most universal tragedy, the loss of that childhood world. At twelve, Aron Kleinfeld is the ringleader among the boys in his Jerusalem neighborhood, their inspiration in dreaming up games and adventures. But as his friends begin to mature, Aron remains imprisoned for three long years in the body of a child. While Israel inches toward the Six-Day War, and while the voices of his friends change and become strange to him, Aron lives in his child body as though in a nightmare. Like a spy in enemy territory, he learns to decipher the internal codes of sexuality and desire, to understand the unyielding bureaucracy of the human body. Hurled between childhood and adulthood, between the pure and the profane, he is