Amazon Book Description
- 'Let my soul die with the Philistines.' Samson the hero; a brave warrior, leader of men and Nazarite of God? Or a misfit given to whoring and lust, who failed to fulfil his destiny?
- In Lion's Honey, award-winning writer David Grossman takes on one of the most vivid and controversial characters in the Bible.
- Revisting Samson's famous battle with the lion, his many women and his betrayal by them all - including the only one he ever loved - Grossman gives us a provocative new take on the story and its climax, Samson's final act of death, bringing down a temple on himself and three thousand Philistines.
- In exhilarating and lucid prose, Grossman reveals the journey of a single, lonely and tortured soul who never found a true home in the world, who was uncomfortable in his very body and who, some might say, was the precursor of today's suicide bombers.
- David Grossman is a leading Israeli writer whose work has been translated into 25 languages. He is author of six internationally acclaimed novels and a number of children's books. Grossman has been presented with numerous awards including the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France). He lives with his wife and children in a suburb of Jerusalem.
Amazon Customer Review - Positive
- David Grossman is for my money the greatest living Israeli writer. His late 80s novel 'See Under: Love' is significant as being one of the first, belated attempts by an Israeli writer to achieve some kind of imaginative sense of the cost of the Holocaust. His non-fiction book 'The Yellow Wind', a series of interviews with Palestinians, is famous in Israel for having more or less predicted the first Intifada. His last novel 'Someone To Run With' takes stock of the corruption and moral bankruptcy of modern Israeli society. He has written passionately and angrily about the plight of the Palestinians, which is more than you can say for many of his contemporaries. I can only assume that the reason he isn't read in English-speaking countries as much as he ought to be is that the Western, English-speaking readership for serious fiction has some sort of preconceived notion that Israeli writers have nothing to say to them.
- They couldn't be more wrong. The other review of this book is remarkably insensitive to where Grossman is coming from. Kenneth Tynan says somewhere that what tends to move us in some kinds of writing is what it must have cost the writer to write it in the first place; I, as a very minor writer myself, am extremely moved by Grossman's agonised depiction of Samson's plight, the tragedy of a man who never really understood himself (how unlike the tragedy of Oedipus, where a man's search for self-knowledge ends up destroying him). Samson, in all his helpless incomprehension, his self-pity, his mixture of almost casual tenderness and outbursts of manic violence, is a hero to many Israelis, and in writing about him Grossman is taking a central myth of Israel on the chin. It's no coincidence that the open secret of Israel's nuclear capacity is sometimes referred to as the 'Samson option' - the unspoken threat that any country that tries to invade Israel will call down nuclear devastation, even if it threatens the existence of Israel itself, as it surely would.
- Grossman himself is a strong critic of Israel's government, and his own son was killed in the 2006 Lebanon war; talking about Samson is not, for him, a polite exercise in playing about with myths, but a burning contemporary issue. This book is, among other things, an attempt on the part of a secular Israeli to explore the murkier and angrier depths of the Jewish imagination. It's a tribute to the secular, literary imagination that Grossman, on the strength of this book, understands the Israeli right a lot better than they will ever understand him. I salute him and recommend this book to anyone who is interested in good writing and/or the Middle East.
Amazon Customer Review - Negative
- The Canongate Myth Series is promoted as a series of short novels in which ancient myths from myriad cultures are reimagined and rewritten by contemporary authors. Its focus is intended to be international with writers from a variety of countries invited to participate. Lion’s Honey is the contribution from Man Booker International Prize winner David Grossman. Translated by Stuart Schoffman it promises ‘a provocative new take’ on the biblical story of Samson.
- Unfortunately this is not a retelling of a myth but rather a study of the biblical text that strongly implies it is being read as a fact based historical account. There is much cross referencing with writing from the Torah and from Jewish academics. The author picks his way through the tale seeking proof of desired notions rather than as one aiming to enlighten with carefully detached reasoning.
- The book opens with a reprinting of the story of Samson from The Authorised King James version of the bible: The Book of Judges, chapters 13-16. This makes for rather dry reading. A foreword then explains that ‘Samson the hero’ is what every Jewish child learns to call the protagonist, despite the fact he was a muscle bound murderer prone to lust and whoring who ended his life as perhaps the first recorded suicide killer. Grossman portrays him as an artist yearning for love. I struggled to agree with the arguments presented for this portrayal.
- Key incidents in the story are dissected and debated. Where the author claims a sensuous side I saw attention seeking and licentiousness. Where he tries to depict women letting Samson down I observed how badly he treated them. Samson came across as petulant and bullying; a much desired child, perhaps over indulged by his parents, who subsequently used his immense strength to wreak destruction when he did not get his own way.
- As an example, Samson decides he will marry a Philistine he is attracted to, not one of his own people. Despite their misgivings his parents agree to this plan. At the wedding Samson, in a show of one-upmanship, sets his guests an impossible riddle that results in bad feeling and a deadly threat made against his new in-laws. Naturally this upsets the bride. When she asks her husband for the solution to the riddle he berates her, stating he has not even told his parents. Thus her secondary importance in his life is made clear before the wedding celebrations are even complete. That she subsequently acts to save her family is hardly a surprise. Following this Samson shows how vicious he can be, killing strangers and burning the community’s newly harvested crops. The author writes of the hero’s yearning for love. Such barbarism is hardly conducive to a loving marital relationship.
- Continuing on the theme of love and a desire for intimacy, questions are posed about why Samson visits a whore. This seemed naive – surely such reasons are obvious. The author sees confusion and emotional need in Samson’s interest in the Philistines. I saw natural curiosity in the world outside a narrow culture. That Samson kept encountering rejections speaks to me of his behaviour around others which, when detailed, is rarely worthy of esteem.
- Of course, instead of trying to make sense of an historical figure one could read the story of Samson as a myth and allow that the more extreme events detailed are included to add colour and enhance the telling of the tale. Where this treatise falls short is the apparent seriousness with which the biblical text is being read and certain religious interpretations accepted.
- Lion’s Honey does not sit easily within a series of evocative story retelling. Even as a study I found it unconvincing.
Book Comment
Text Colour Conventions (see disclaimer)- Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2025
- Mauve: Text by correspondent(s) or other author(s); © the author(s)