"In David Grossman’s title essay from his new book Writing in the Dark, the Israeli novelist states that writing 'has immense power, the power to change a world and create a world, the power to give words to the mute and to bring about tikkun —'repair'—in the deepest, kabbalistic sense of the word.' A simple sentence, bold in its assertion of the power of writers and writing, but one that reveals layer upon layer of meaning. First of all, what is 'the Dark' to which he refers? For the author of See Under: Love and The Yellow Wind, whose essays in this collection combine the personal, political, and cultural, the darkness is many things: the claustrophobic political situation in Israel; humanity’s lack of psychological self-awareness; the flattening of language that creates heat, but little light; and, more acutely perhaps for Grossman, the recent death of his son Uri during the Second Lebanon War. The fact that Uri means 'light' in Hebrew adds another level of poignancy to Grossman’s statement. As someone tilling the same journalistic and novelistic fields as Grossman, who has had the privilege to spend time with him on his visits to San Francisco, and with a son named Lior (also a variation on the Hebrew word for light), I feel a special connection to his personal, artistic and existential anguish. Which is why his statements of confidence for what writing can do are all the more remarkable. Taking seriously the idea that writing partakes of some holy spark—since God created the world through words, and the very language of the Torah has a direct connection to God—Grossman suggests that writing, and by extension true human communication, is one of our few clear divine gifts."—Daniel Schifrin, The Jewish Week

"Israeli novelist Grossman muses about authors who have influenced him and about the difficulties of living and writing in one of the world's most dangerous places. In these six slender essays, most originally delivered as speeches, the author discusses his passionate belief in the redemptive powers of literature. Grossman recalls reading Sholem Aleichem at his father's urging when he was a boy, then later realizing that the people he read about in those tales were the sorts of people who had died in the Holocaust. He alludes to other literary mentors—Kafka, Mann, Boll, Woolf—and writes amusingly about the influence of Bruno Schulz, whom he'd not read until a reader informed him that his work sounded like Schulz's. He writes compellingly of 'the Other,' examining our fear of those who are not like us and the analogous fear of the 'others' who dwell inside us, whom we struggle to control. Grossman, who lost a son in military action in Lebanon, reveals the ability to view the world from perspectives other than his own; he tries to enter the minds of, say, Palestinians, just as he attempts to inhab