Product Details
The Zigzag Kid: A Novel

The Zigzag Kid: A Novel
By David Grossman

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Product Description

Nonny Feuerberg's father is the world's greatest detective, wholly dedicated to the war on crime. Nonny trains himself to follow in his father's footsteps, but to his father's dismay his wild side keeps breaking out. Then Nonny finds himself traveling on a train with the magnetic, elegant Felix Glick, international outlaw extraordinaire. Not until Felix has hijacked the locomotive and whisked Nonny off on a quest for the trademark purple scarf of the great actress Lola Ciperola does Nonny realize that he is in the hands of a kindly and fascinating kidnapper—and that although he himself knows almost nothing about his own mother, who died when he was a baby, both Felix and Lola seem to know a lot about her.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #482192 in Books
  • Published on: 1998-11-28
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 320 pages

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal
Noted for both his provocative journalism (e.g., The Yellow Wind, LJ 4/15/88) and his fiction (e.g., The Book of Common Grammar, LJ 4/15/94), Israeli writer Grossman here offers an imaginative new tale whereby the rebellious son of a detective is whisked away by a friendly kidnapper on the trail of the trademark purple scarf of actress Lola Ciperola.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The New York Times Book Review, Richard Bernstein
The Zigzag Kid is lighthearted and funny, a book of enormous charm and, unfortunately, also an excess of whimsy.... One reads The Zigzag Kid with considerable delight, as Grossman, via the engaging vehicle of Nonny, takes us along on his clever intrigue. The delight never fades entirely, but it becomes mixed with some dismay when Grossman's psychological mystery takes on a forced, fairy-tale gloss.

Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review, Richard Eder
Israeli writer David Grossman has packed comedy, fantasy and moral instruction into his tale of a boy on a quest. Grossman labors to hitch up his gaudy display and get it moving. There is a great deal of movement, in fact, but most of it is the author's.

Customer Reviews

a message to A reader from Herzliya Israel5
you could get in touch with DG via the Guardian newspaper in London. I know it has an anti-Israel image in israel, but that's a crock. Anyone who knows DGs work knows he would never involve himself with an anti-Israel paper. (he writes for them regularly).

Incidentally, the myth of Israel being a target of the Guardian has been propogated by Conrad Blacks' Jerusalem Post. Black owns the Guardian's competition in the UK - coincidence?

Black also is one of those messianic christians who is busy befriending jews until the day he and his chums expect Jesus to rise again - when one third of all jews will convert and the other two thirds will be "forced into the see". Who is the real friend of the Israeli people I ask...

where is this man's nobel?5
Grossman has changed my life totally. Because of him (particularly 'See under: love') I have even been learning Hebrew. There was something about this book though that made me leave it on the shelf - dunno what, maybe the cover, some inbuilt snobbiness about a book about children - and it stayed there for years. More fool me...

I started it and didn't stop until the last page. Absolute perfection. Possibly the most uplifting read I have ever read, and I always had a snidy pessimistic view towards sentimentality. Again, more fool me...

This cat's like a personal tutor to me, and I cannot imagine life without his (and Nabokov - my other fave's) books.

....

Just a quick note from a hebrew speaking reader of the book4
Just thought I'd point out that the kid's name is actually Nono... (I read the book in hebrew..)