The paperback edition of Lavie Tidhar‘s acclaimed MAROR is out tomorrow! Published by Head of Zeus, here’s the synopsis…
How do you build a nation?
It takes statesmen and soldiers, farmers and factory workers, of course. But it also takes thieves, prostitutes and policemen.
Nation-building demands sacrifice. And one man knows exactly where those bodies are buried: Cohen, a man who loves his country. A reasonable man for unreasonable times.
A car bomb in the back streets of Tel Aviv. A diamond robbery in Haifa. Civil war in Lebanon. Rebel fighters in the Colombian jungle. A double murder in Los Angeles.
How do they all connect? Only Cohen knows.
Maror is the story of a war for a country’s soul — a dazzling spread of narrative gunshots across four decades and three continents.
It is a true story. All of these things happened.
Here are just a few of the great reviews the novel has received since it was first published…
‘Some write in ink, others in song, Tidhar writes in fire… MAROR is a kaleidoscopic masterpiece, immense in its sympathies, alarming in its irreverences and altogether exhilarating.’ — Junot Díaz
‘One of the boldest, most visionary writers I’ve ever read creates both a vivid political exploration and a riveting crime epic. It’s like the Jewish Godfather!’ — Silvia Moreno-Garcia
‘MAROR blends the page-turning wit of a hard-boiled detective noir with the stirring intrigue of a multi-national political epic. An ambitious achievement that weaves a tapestry of both story and statement.’ — Kevin Jared Hosein
‘A masterpiece of the sacred and the profane … a literary triumph.’ — Guardian
‘Amos Oz’s A Tale of Love and Darkness… Fade[s] into oblivion compared with Lavie Tidhar’s magnificent novel MAROR, a panoramic look at four decades of the dark, despicable side of Israel, of death, corruption, violence and drugs… It’s a brilliant undertaking.’ — Jewish Chronicle
‘A bloody beast of a book… MAROR is to Israeli history what Tarantino is to American movie culture’ — Daily Mail
‘Radiant with all the brutally elegant atmosphere of crime noir, and the richly nuanced complexity and style of Marlon James’ A Brief History of Seven Killings, it’s a genre-busting novel that will catch your breath … At once illuminating, thrilling and thought-provoking, this tale of corruption, killings, sacrifice and the souls that make up a nation is a symphonic feat of fiction.’ — LoveReading
‘Who can forget the savage, musical James Ellroy prose circa the L.A. Quartet books? Now we have a successor … Lavie Tidhar, a marvelous multi-genre author who never fails to delight, has now penned his noir opus. MAROR is a heady, nonstop brew of terror, violence, and mayhem, while also exuding swathes of coursing humanity.’ — Read Listen Watch
‘An unforgettably powerful saga … a sweeping portrayal of violence, corruption and chaos threaded through by veins of humanity… It is difficult to do justice to such a monumental work. So many aspects of MAROR attract superlatives but they fail to convey the range and breathtaking insight of this epic crime novel. A book for all lovers of great literature.’ — Queensland Reviewers Collective
‘This is crime writing in the tradition of Balzac and Dickens and a major achievement, full of sound, fury, drugs and blood… An earthquake of a book.’ — Crime Time
‘MAROR is a profane, irreverent, scathing, sometimes blackly humorous and often compassionate fever-dream history of Israel… possibly his best yet.’ — NewTown Review of Books
Lavie’s highly-anticipated next novel is ADAMA, due to be published by Apollo/Head of Zeus on September 14th.
