The Zigzag Kid

First UK edition. 8vo. Pp. [vi], 309. Black cloth boards, lettered in gilt to spine; tan endpapers. Sewn-in silk ribbon marker.

Signed by Author to title-page.

Translated from the Hebrew by Betsy Rosenberg. Originally published in 1994 under the title Yesh yeladim zigzag, by HaSifriya HaHadasha / HaKibbutz HaMeuchad Publishing House, Tel Aviv.

Author's fourth novel. Winner of the 1996 Premio Mondello and the 1997 Premio Grinzane Cavour [both in Italy]. A picaresque, comic tall tale of a hijacked locomotive and the quest for the trademark purple scarf of a great actress. By the winner of the 2017 Man Booker International Prize for A Horse Walks into a Bar. In 2018, he was awarded the Israel Prize for Literature, the state's highest cultural honour. Basis for the 2012 Dutch-Belgian family adventure film of the same name, directed by Vincent Bal and starring Thomas Simon and Isabella Rossellini.

"Grossman's delightful novel of adolescent initiation is a kind of contemporary urban fairy tale... [His] story of innocence transformed is so clearly elaborated – and so touchingly true... it's difficult not to cheer." –San Francisco Sunday Chronicle