And another tough read

David Grossman's new novel "Until the End of Land" was recently published in Israel. It tells the story of a woman who drops her son off to participate in a military operation when he's just about to complete his service, and she's afraid she'll never see him again.
The horror of reading it lies partly in the knowledge that the author's own son, a gentle, beautiful boy, was killed in the last war in Lebanon, as he was writing this novel. The inevitability there is devastating.
Every second page I start to sob and must stop to breath.
Is this all there is for us from now on, in terms of great Hebrew literature (it is a great book, no doubt about that) - holocaust and war, death and sadness? I hope not. There must be more. In that vibrant, sensual culture of the middle east there's got to be more.