Biography

David Grossman (Hebrew: דויד גרוסמן; born 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, emigrated from Dynów in Poland with his widowed mother at the age of nine. His mother's family was Labor 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 years.In 1971, Grossman served in the IDF military intelligence corps. He was in the army when the Yom Kippur War broke out in 1973, but saw no action.Grossman studied philosophy and theater at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Grossman lives in Mevasseret Zion on the outskirts of Jerusalem. He is married to Michal Grossman, a child psychologist. They had three children, Yonatan, Ruthi, and Uri. Uri was a tank-commander in the Israel Defense Forces, and was killed in action on the last day of the 2006 Lebanon War. Uri's life was later celebrated in Grossman's book Falling Out of Time.