March 2023 Update
English version coming soon
The book was published in Hebrew in December 2021 and evoked a public discourse about military post trauma. Many literary reviews were written about the book, and upon its publication, a four page editorial was published in the best selling newspaper in Israeli (Yediot Aharonot).
When reading the responses of the Israeli readers, I realized that the heavy price collected by the war, is something the whole world should be talking about.
The English version work is in progress...
WE ARE 80% THERE: EXPECTED RELEASE - JULY 23'!
The book
ISBN: 978-84-09-50768-9
Out There
When the 2006 Lebanon War ended, and the last tank of my company crossed the fence back to Israeli territory, I felt the immense relief for getting out of there in one piece. I didn't yet understand that another war was about to begin: the war on post-trauma. The days of battle left me with difficult memories I chose to repress using all kinds of creative excuses. Yet the post trauma didn't waiver and everything just went downhill – and me, I continued hiding it all out of shame.
Out There is a book that deals with the "hero" image of the Israeli man, facing the daily reality of a combat soldier who returned from the battlefield with a mental injury he conceals from those around him and especially from himself.
This book does not deal with the experiences of war, but rather with coping which begins after the war has ended. The book is written as a moving and revealing journey diary that follows the decade after the war: nightmarish nights, psychological sessions which flooded a subconscious conflict, the relationship with a heroic father who fought the existential war for the State of Israel and having a constant fear from the next war that could break out any day.
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The mental journey described in the book is accompanied by a physical one taking place an old pick-up truck I restored. The physical journey runs from the Israel-Lebanon border in the north of Israel and up to the Gulf of Eilat on the Israeli southern border. During the physical and mental journey, I deal with an inexplicable difficulty from reading the notebooks I wrote immediately after the war ended – a detailed battle diary that I didn't dare read for more than a decade.
Get a sneak peek to the first two pages
The Author
Omri Ginzburg
I was Born in 1984 and was raised in Kfar Saba in the shadow of my father's and uncle's injury they sustained in the Yom Kippur War (1973). At the age of 18, I enlisted for mandatory service in the Israeli Defense Force. Later, went on an officer's course and completed a 4 years service. I was unable to utter the two words of post-trauma for many years of repression and failed attempts to escape the new reality.
In 2017 I left Israel and moved to Barcelona in the hope that the distance will make coping easier. Upon arriving in Barcelona, I began writing the book without knowing why or for whom I am writing it. The writing went on for four years of obsessive digging into the wounds and memories in an attempt to find an answer. Only when reading the whole story, I was able to understand, for the first time in my life, the reason for the tormented journey I was going through. At that moment, I also realized it was time to stop hiding.
Stay tuned
2021 Omri Ginzburg | All Rights Reserved