A new eBook edition of Lavie Tidhar‘s acclaimed, award-winning A MAN LIES DREAMING is available now! Published via the JABberwocky eBook Program in the UK and North America, here’s the synopsis…
Since its original 2014 publication, A Man Lies Dreaming has been translated into multiple languages and gained a cult following for its dark humor, prescient politics and powerful exploration of the impossibility of fantasy.
1939: Adolf Hitler, fallen from power, seeks refuge in a London engulfed in the throes of a very British Fascism. Now eking a miserable living as a down-at-heels private eye and calling himself Wolf, he has no choice but to take on the case of a glamorous Jewish heiress whose sister went missing.
It’s a decision Wolf will very shortly regret.
For in another time and place a man lies dreaming: Shomer, once a Yiddish pulp writer, who dreams lurid tales of revenge in the hell that is Auschwitz.
The excellent cover, an homage to the Penguin Classics, is by the ever-excellent Sarah Anne Langton.
The eBook is available from all major eBook retailers. Here are some links:
- UK — Amazon, Apple, Google Play, Kobo
- US — Amazon, Apple, Google Play, Kobo, Barnes & Noble
Here’s just a small number of the reviews the novel has received so far…
‘Comes crashing through the door of literature like Sam Spade with a .38 in his hand. This is a shocking book as well as a rather brilliant one… Like Tarantino, Tidhar may find that some people don’t take him seriously. But the joke’s on them. Seriousness is the least of it: A MAN LIES DREAMING is a twisted masterpiece.’ — Guardian
‘Wild, noir-infused alternative history from genre-bender Tidhar… A wholly original Holocaust story: as outlandish as it is poignant.’ — Kirkus (Starred Review)
‘[S]avagely funny… A MAN LIES DREAMING, by the Israeli-born novelist Lavie Tidhar, has not been published with the fanfare bestowed on Martin Amis’s The Zone of Interest or Howard Jacobson’s J, but it is their equal for savage humour… Those who enjoy laughter in the dark will relish Tidhar’s parade of mordant ironies… This novel is weird, upsetting, unmissable.’ 5* — Telegraph
‘No one can accuse Lavie Tidhar of being risk-averse… Tidhar reveals – as he did earlier in OSAMA and to some extent in THE VIOLENT CENTURY – that he’s really less interested in the mechanistic ‘‘what-ifs’’ of conventional alternate history than he is in the interpenetration of real and invented histories, or perhaps more grandiosely in the interpenetration of art and life – even the often-demeaned art of sensational fiction or (as in the case of THE VIOLENT CENTURY) comic books. This is what makes him such an interesting writer, and what makes A MAN LIES DREAMING quite a bit more complex than it at first appears… the novel is not without a fair amount of humor, and that might well be the boldest risk Tidhar is taking here…’ — Locus
‘The best book I read last year is A MAN LIES DREAMING by Lavie Tidhar, a form of fictional historiography based on a’ what if ‘principle. I love that, if it is done well and intelligently… It sounds ridiculous and it has certainly been written down with a great sense of irony, but at the same time it is so cleverly constructed and such a spectacular conclusion unfolds that you are going to take it all very seriously.’ — Sting (yes, that one) to Volksrant
‘Everything in this genre-bender works; intriguing historical characters are worked into expertly managed plots, and the visceral noir atmosphere is juxtaposed nicely against the drawing-room world of London’s political scene.’ — Booklist (Starred Review)
‘A Chandler-esque mystery… a jarring tale of a grim, gray alternative world… Seldom will readers come across fantasy as well conceived and well written as this exceptional novel.’ — Library Journal (Starred Review)
‘Set during the election of a demagogue who battens on the fears of an underemployed populace threatened by thousands of foreign-born refugees, A MAN LIES DREAMING feels disturbingly prescient. Tidhar holds up a mirror not just to Wolf, but to ourselves. In doing so, he reminds us that even — especially — under the most terrible of circumstances, stories are all we have. And in the right hands, they can be a formidable weapon.’ — Washington Post
JABberwocky has also published a number of Lavie’s other books.
