David Grossman

David Grossman January 25, 1954) is an Israeli author. His books have been translated into more than 30 languages. In 2018, he was awarded the Israel Prize for literature. David Grossman was born in Jerusalem. He is the elder of two brothers. His mother, Michaella, was born in Mandatory Palestine; his father, Yitzhak, immigrated from Dynów in Poland with his widowed mother at the age of nine. His mother's family was Zionist and poor. His grandfather paved roads in the Galilee and supplemented his income by buying and selling rugs. His maternal grandmother, a manicurist, left Poland after police harassment. Accompanied by her son and daughter, she immigrated to Palestine and worked as a maid in wealthy neighborhoods. Grossman's father was a bus driver, then a librarian. Among the literature he brought home for his son to read were the stories of Sholem Aleichem.] At age 9, Grossman won a national competition on knowledge of Sholem Aleichem. He worked as a child actor for the national radio and continued working for the Israel Broadcasting Authority for nearly 25 year In 2015, Grossman withdrew his candidacy for the Israel Prize for Literature after Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu tried to remove two of the judging panel whom he claimed were "anti-Zionist".[6] He was awarded the prize in 2018