[4] In 2017, he was awarded the Man Booker International Prize in conjunction with his frequent collaborator and translator, Jessica Cohen, for his novel A Horse Walks Into a Bar.

[6] Initially supportive of Israel's action during the 2006 Lebanon War on the grounds of self-defense, on August 10, 2006, he and fellow authors Amos Oz and A.B.

Yehoshua held a press conference at which they strongly urged the government to agree to a ceasefire that would create the basis for a negotiated solution, saying: "We had a right to go to war.

"[1] Two days later, Grossman's 20-year-old son Uri, a Staff Sergeant in the 401st Armored Brigade, was killed in southern Lebanon when his tank was hit by an anti-tank missile shortly before the ceasefire came into effect.

[1] Although Grossman had carefully avoided writing about politics, in his stories, if not his journalism, the death of his son prompted him to deal with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in greater detail.

[1] Two months after his son's death, Grossman addressed a crowd of 100,000 Israelis who had gathered to mark the anniversary of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995.

He denounced Ehud Olmert's government for a failure of leadership and he argued that reaching out to the Palestinians was the best hope for progress in the region: "Of course I am grieving, but my pain is greater than my anger.

"[1] About his personal link to the war, Grossman said: "There were people who stereotyped me, who considered me this naive leftist who would never send his own children into the army, who didn't know what life was made of.

While attending weekly demonstrations in Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem against Jewish settlers taking over houses in Palestinian neighbourhoods, he was assaulted by police.

"[1] 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 who he claimed were "anti-Zionist".