>> welcome to the plapl. tonight, two powerful writers, one in fiction, one in non-fiction. we began with israeli novelist david grossman. his book "to the end of the land." >> writing this book was an act of choosing life against the temptation of despair, against the gravity of despair and grief and the book is about the wholeness of life. it's a very vital book. >> rose: and the power of story of african american from the south to the north. isabel wilkerson's book is called "the warmth of other suns. " i grew up the daughter of people who migrated from the south to the north. you could say i've been writing it all my life. it was a story i was surrounded

by in washington, d.c. where everyone around me, the parents were from south carolina, north carolina, georgia. my mother was from rome, georgia migrated to washington, d.c. my father migrated from southern virginia to washington, d.c. different decades, would never have met had there been no great migration, had they not left the south and landed in the same city. so in some ways i exist because of the great migration and i think i've been in some ways writing it all my life. >> rose: david grossman and isabel wilkerson coming up. maybe you want school kids to have more exposure to the arts. maybe you want to provide meals for the needy. or maybe you want to help when the unexpected happens.

whatever you want to do, members project from american express can help you take the first step. vote, volunteer, or donate for the causes you believe in at membersproject.com. take charge of making a difference. captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> rose: david grossman is here, he's one of israel's preeminent authors. he writes both fiction and

non-fiction. his novel "sea under love" explored the holocaust through the eyes of a child. when the the intifada broke out in 1988, the book was called "prophetic." his latest novel has been publish called "to the end of the land." i'm pleased to have him back at this table. welcome. >> hi, charlie. >> rose: what is it about it? >> it is about life within conflict, violent conflict. the book i wanted to write in two layers, two levels. one is the bigger layer of the israeli/palestinian conflict. wars and occupation and terrorism. everything that is there that is our daily bread so to say. but what interested me no less is to the life of a family?

with all the details and nuances of the family i always believed that the greatest drama of humanity is the drama of the family and the most significant event in human history they have not occurred on battlefields or palaces or parliaments but rather in kitchens and bedrooms and rooms of children and i wanted to show how the middle east conflict projects its brutality into this tender bubble of one family and what it does to it. >> rose: tell me your characters. >> well, the main one is ora, ora which in hebrew means life. she's quite typical israeli woman. she's around 50, very impulsive. very sensual, exposed in her feelings. straightforward.

is not afraid to express her opinions, sometime she is overflows we motions. i think she's very familiar to everyone who reads her in israel and she's the mother of two boy they are not boys anymore, they are 24 and 21. but she's the mother of ofer. and in the beginning of the book she is waiting to offer to be released from the army and she plans to go to a trip on foot with anymore the galilee of israel and she prepares backpacks and all that. and on the very last day of ofer in the army, there's a new military operation that israel initiates against the palestinians in the west bank and he volunteers to go there. he does not go to be... he does not want to be released from the army. he says that for three years he was trained for this operation, he will not abandon his comrades. he wants to go to this operation

and she's left alone. and all her hopes that while she will be with him in the galilee, she will be able to reclaim him. because when guy in to the army, they change. is they become more stiff. they have to cover themselves in a kind of suit of armor in order not to be exposed to the reality of the conflict. and she believes that if they will be alone together in the nature, he will be able to melt again and to become the child that she knew but now suddenly she's alone and she goes alone to the galilee. but on her way she almost kidnaps a man called avram and avram is the love of her life. he's not her husband but he had... he's affected her all her life. and avram, who was like a sparkle of light and life and

creativity and passion when he was a young man, in the war of '73, the yom kippur war he fell captive at the hands of the egyptians and he returned broken and he doesn't want any contact with life. but ora by taking him to the galilee and starting to tell him the life story of ofer in a way gradually slowly she commits him back to life and to life of family and what does it mean raise a child. and she tells him about all the smallest details from which we create one human being in the world. we accumulate one human being in the world. and she does it because this is her only way to protect her son who is now in the battlefield. so you see the story is both about the minutiae of life and the wholeness of life, of one family and at the same time it takes place against the terrible situation of the conflict.

>> rose: the power of emotion in israel seems different than almost any other place. >> yeah, you are absolutely right and i always think that our politics is made of 99% of emotions and only 1% of logic. and by the way, maybe this is also the way to approach this conflict, you know? emotionally. to really understand the emotion the deep and sharp emotion of both peoples involved. to be attentive to their insult, to their sense of humiliation. to their... even to the talent of self-destruction, >> to see all the places where they are both distorting themselves and only if you allow yourself, you expose yourself to this high voltage of

emotionality, only then you will be able to understand the depth of the tragedy and maybe then you will be able to set the people free. >> rose: if israeli leaders could live in the occupied territory as you did and feel and see, would they make different decisions? i guess they know what the reality is. maybe not in details. maybe they do not do what they should do and this is really put themselves in the place of the other and see reality from the point of view of the palestinians i think it's very important for us. it's very important because only then they will be in contact with reality, not onlyle with the projection of their nightmares or their wishful thinking. but basically i believe that netanyahu, he know it is situation in the occupied territories and yet i think he is more dominated by worry for

israel, by fears, by suspicion regarding the intentions of the palestinians. >> rose: you know, i'm fascinated by the release of the documents from the israeli government about the '73 war and how close it was you're part of that conversation, you hear that conversation, it's a big topic in israel. what is the... it says how close it is always for israel in this case they were surprised by a war. and also by the tenacity of the arabs. >> yeah. this xi ten shl fear prevails all the time in israel. i know that when you look at israel from the outside, from what you see on the t.v. screen, you see a kind of military fist, iron fist. but we see the palm of the hand and the fragility of israel. and, you know, in the book which is called "to the end of the

land" and has this double meaning as well, yes... >> rose: what does it mean "to the end of the land"? >> first it means or asks the palestinian driver to take her to the police where israel ends but also it echo this is option that terrifies us all the time that there might be an end to this country which really freaks me out to think that after 62 years of independence, sovereignty, having enormous strong army yet our existence is not guaranteed. is not solid. and at a certain moment when ora and avram, they spend on the top of the mountain and they look around at the wonderful view of galilee and she tells him "isn't it always like that with israel that every encounter with it is also bidding farewell to it?" this doubleness exists all the time. you know, if you read in an american paper that america plans its road plan for the

years 2030 it sounds normal, >> reasonable. no sane israeli will make plans for such a long time in advance and i'll tell you, when i think of israel 20 or 30 years from now i feel a twinge in my heart as if i violated a taboo by allowing myself too much portion too huge portion of future. >> rose: too optimistic in your assumption that it will be there. >> yes. and this must be corrected. this must be changed. it's impossible that we shall continue to live in this uncertainty. and i believe that only peace will allow us to enjoy this will sequence of generation and having a solid feeling of future and also something that is maybe hard to understand but i will call it solidity of existence. of the people who is rooted in its own land, who has fixed borders between him and his neighbors until now 62 years israel does not have fixed

borders. our borders all the time are receding, expanding. it's like someone who lives in a room that the walls are moving all the time or the ground is shaking under his feet all the time. this cannot go on like that forever. only peace we'll a... only peace will allow us in israel to have a feeling of home, of real home, you know? israel was created so it will be the homeland of the jewish people. the jewish people who never really felt at home in the world. this is our tragedy. and we have israel and still it is not the home that we need and we deserve and we yearn to. only peace will allow us to have home and future and this solidity of existence. >> rose: can you afford to think about what israel would be like if there was peace? >> i think a lot about it and i think that even thinking about

it is obligatory because most israelis and palestinians they so deeply misbelieve in the option of peace that they despair of this possibility at all. and i think it's so necessary. >> rose: you have to believe in it? >> to believe in it. to insist on believing in that. to make a kind of a massage to the reluctant consciousness, the terrified consciousness. so we shall know what is the alternative and remember that there is an alternative. that there's not any divine decree of orders to live by the sort of our life. >> rose: what is the possibility of the power of literature? >> literature cannot change reality, unfortunately. people say that we have great influence in israel, but if that was true, then israel might have looked a little different from what it is now. literature has the ability to use the right words, not the

words of that... the big systems, the government, the army, the media or our fears fabricate for us but all things by the right name and by that to remove the buffers that separate between the individual and the situation but more than everything, i think, writers have this ability to look at the point of view... to look from the point of view from the other even if this other is my enemy. it does not weaken my stand, my position. it does not weaken my israeli identity. >> rose: writers and the power to do that but politicians don't. >> i'm afraid that most politicians... >> rose: but why? >> that's a very good question. why is that? maybe because they feel especially in regions like us where violence is so dominant maybe they feel that they have to address the fears, the anxiety of the people in order

to become popular. >> rose: it is often said by people who have reviewed this book that the arab driver, that you write brilliantly of his perspective and his relationship. >> yes, of course. it intrigues me, the situation of the israeli and palestinians who are trapped between us, the israeli jewish majority and their brothers in the occupied territories, the other palestinians. and the israeli palestinians, they in their life in their flesh and blood that feel this ambiguity and doubleness of the situation. and as i said, they are trapped between us. but... okay. >> rose: go ahead. >> what i tried to show is how this character sammy, who is almost... i mean, he knows how to use the israeli/jewish narrative and he uses versus

from the bible and he knows how to use proverbs in a way that suddenly makes him the new jew, so to say. yes? the jews used knob the diaspora when they were weak and dependent on others and to use his it withs in a very shrewd way against all the centers of powers of the israeli society and he and ora, they are friends they are good friends. and they drove together for hours and they like each other and she's very sensitive and attentive to his complexity and to his unbearable situation. and yet suddenly when there is tension between them in the car when she without thinking asks him top drive her son ofer to the gathering point of the army from which he will be sent to the occupied territorys to fight the brothers of sami, suddenly

tension grow there is and in a minute they become representatives of their hostile peoples and when we are representatives we tend to overadvocate and to say things we don't really believe in. things that even humiliate us as human beings. but you could... you can see how in this little bubble of? the taxi all the israeli/arab conflicts suddenly comes to life. >> rose: the dedication of this book, 1985 to 2006. there it is, the death of your son. >> it's very hard for me to speak about him in public. i started to write the book some months before he went to the army. i felt that it would be a way for me to accompany him as much

as i can. >> rose: you almost thought that it was a protective... >> i had this wishful thinking, you know, this magical thinking that writing might protect him but i do not really believe in that. words cannot prevent that. words can make the world a little more understandable. it can make some place in a world that became crazy, a place in the sense of a home. but i didn't think it would really protect him. and three years and three months after i started writing the book the second lebanon war broke out and he was sent to lebanon and a missile hit his tank and killed him. >> rose: and his colleagues, too four of them were killed at one time. >> yes, all the four. >> rose: this was how many days before?

>> hours before the end of the war. >> rose: not days, hours. >> hours. >> rose: you have said to me... you're a writer and this is both literature and reality so as much as you can, help me bring these together and how it came together for you. >> it's still hard for me to speak about it. you sigh, the book is so much about how difficult and even sometimes how heroic it is to create life in reality like ours and how easy it is to destroy life. i know... i can say one thing. after the shiva, after the seven days of lamenting, i went back

to writing this book i felt that for me it is the only possible way to go back from the exile that such loss creates. you know, when something like that happens you feel exiled from everything you knew. from the whole story of your life. >> rose: exiled? >> yeah, you do not belong anymore to anything. nothing can be taken for granted after that. and going back to write the story and to tie again the threads that were torn and to make some sense in this chaotic world, this is how i felt regarding my life and the world back then. and to be able to infuse life into characters again and to imagine and to insist on this word and not the other word to

find the precise definition for a feeling or sensation, even though it seemed to me at the time almostly say stupid or irrelevant. how can i sit for hours looking for one word when a whole world has been destroyed for he? and yet when i found the right word there was such deep satisfaction of doing something properly in this chaotic world. and insisting on it. and i think that for me writing this book was an act of choosing life against the temptation of despair, against the gravity of despair and grief and the book is about the wholeness of life. it's a very vital book as anyone who has read it knows it. and yet like all our life in

israel there's this strong vitality, this passion for life and this... you know, the intensity of life of individual and inner life and life of family and it's all on the ecochamber of anxiety of fear of loss and fear of death. this mixture... well, maybe this is what makes israel such an intense place. the voltage of our reality is incredible i do not feel it in any other place on earth. i wish it to be reduced a little yes? we have a little overdose of this tension, of this intensity and yet this is part of the things that make life in israel so much intriguing and so compelling and i just wish that

in my book i manage to grasp a little of this intensity. >> rose: as you try to grapple with it and put in the here and choosing words, as you say, spending hours choosing one word that captures in your own mind what it is you feel in your heart, that's the challenge, >> >> yes. >> rose: yet people raise the question when you look at sort of the invasion of the gaza did it do something to israel or not? >> inevitably it does things, inevitably and i mean if you... if all your life as a people, all our short history, 62, 63 years of israel we are con stabilityly involved in violence is we produce violence that is addressed at us, it has an effect on the country, on the

way people are approaching each other, on our self-image, on the way people are looking at us from the outside, on the amount of violence within our families, in our roads on the beaches it is there, violence is very, very present. this should be maybe the main reason to change the situation, to allow israel and the israelis to explore life of normality, life without this dead and sour feeling, this lack of hope and lack of existential confidence, all this together it creates a reality that is bad for israel, it's not good for us. we are not doing any favor to the palestinians by coming into negotiation of peace process with them. we are doing a great disservice to ourselves. >> rose: do you feel a kinship

with writers at any time in history who have been so bound up in this the state that they lived? >> rose: of course... >> of course... i think by definition. i'll give you an example. by definition writers are almost all the time in such situations, such situation of being outsiders, of being critical to their society. >> rose: that is their role. jup >> to be a built in outsider. to see the reality of your country in sympathetic eyes because it's important to be sympathetic even to the mistakes that your country does and to understand where it comes from why we are almost doomed to make this mistake.

but also to insist on the ability to change, to redeem ourselves from this situation. >> rose: i asked ask because i sometimes believe without flattering you that every... all countries need this voice and most of... many of them may have it and we know of lots of examples and they have received all kinds of accolades in terms of capturing what it is at the soul of a nation and being able to tell through fiction better than journalism or even history perhaps what is in the sharpest way the choice that has to be made for survival. >> and i think that literature can do it even better than politicians in a way and even

better than the media because when you read the book that is really facing the situation, with all the complexity of the situation suddenly you are not doomed to have a very fair political position or political opinion, you can allow yourself to be in contact with all kinds of aspects of the situation. you are more liberated. i can testify for this book when people read in the israel people from contrary ends of the political and they said this is my book and i didn't understand how is it possible and i wished that i knew the formulation, the formula so i will be able to bring these people together also in life, in reality, not only in the book.

but i think that suddenly people were able to shift very freely from their fears and hopes and ora sometimes is a very right winger and sometimes she's on the extreme left because she's a normal human being. she does not have to be entrenched in one feeling. nothing bad happens if we israelis will allow our ourselves to admit that we have inflicted evil on them for years. if we should be in contact with these feelings, we should be in contact with reality. maybe it will help to approach quicker... >> rose: to have those feelings may very well liberate you. >> i do not say we are the only one with guilty... >> rose: no one says that. >> but just... you know, to be in contact with all these feelings that we are so well trained to suppress not to know

and we are not in contact with the complexity of the situation. >> rose: didn't you say israeli has criminally wasted not only the lives its sons and daughters but also the miracle that occurred here. the miracle that occurred here. a great and rare opportunity history granted it, to create an enlightened properly function democratic state that would act in accordance with jewish and universal values. powerful language criminally wasted. >> yeah, yeah. when you have such a rare privilege to have a state of the 2,000 years we did not have a state and to be able to gather together people from 70 countries lands and to form what we have formed there, a democracy, most of the israelis came from places that never heard about democracy, they came from russia,