Lavie Tidhar‘s ADAMA has been selected as the number one crime novel of 2025 by Deutschlandfunk Kultur! The novel is published by Suhrkamp Verlag, and was translated by Conny Lösch. Here’s the synopsis…

1946 beginnt die junge Ruth, sich in Palästina ein neues Leben aufzubauen, getrieben von jugendlichen Idealen in einem Land, das ihr feindlich gesinnt ist. Sie ist eine ungarische Zionistin, die, anders als die meisten Mitglieder ihrer Familie, den Nazis in Budapest entkommen konnte. Ruth wird das Herz des Kibbuz Trashim, und für sie ist der Kibbuz heilig, heilige Erde, also »Adama«, seine Existenz ist ihre Lebensaufgabe. Wenn dafür knallharte Entscheidungen nötig sind, dann wird sie sie…

ADAMA is published in the UK by Apollo. Here’s the English-language synopsis…

THERE IS NO LAND WITHOUT BLOOD, AND I WATER THIS LAND WITH THE BLOOD OF MY MEN.

Ruth’s family were in Budapest when the Nazis came.

Now Ruth is in Palestine, amid the bare hills inland from Haifa, breaking the rocky soil of an unyielding land before it breaks her.

With her comrades, her fellow kibbutzniks, she will build a better world. There will be green grass, orange trees and pomegranates, a land that is their own and no one else’s.

So they till their fields, dig their wells, build their homes and forge a new way of living, fiercely proud of their shared pursuit of a dream.

But as one generation begets another, the dream unravels, twisted into a dark tapestry of secrets and lies; sacrificed for revenge, forbidden love and murder.

A sweeping historical epic following four generations of a single family as they struggle to hold on to their land and each other.