We’re very happy to report that ADAMA by Lavie Tidhar has been long-listed for the Nota Bene Prize! Here’s a little bit about the award, from their website:
“Championing influential fiction, the Nota Bene Prize highlights and celebrates the power of the reading community. Focusing on thought-provoking and relatable reads that have received organic, word-of-mouth recognition…”
Published by Apollo/Head of Zeus, ADAMA is a stand-alone novel. Here’s the 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.
Here’s just a small selection taken from the many great reviews ADAMA has received so far…
‘ADAMA is an unstoppable masterpiece… Tidhar is a magician, a time-traveler, a historian, a comedian, a raconteur, a subversive, a truth teller and also one of the finest writers around. If history is a nightmare we’re all trying to wake up from, then ADAMA is a trumpet blast that rings out the past and into the future.’ — Junot Diaz
‘The prolific Tidhar has previously stuck to science fiction, but he is fast emerging as the leader of a new wave of Israeli literature, thanks to his risky, exhilarating experiments with tone and genre… ADAMA, which means ‘land’ in Hebrew (although ‘dam’ means blood) reaches further back, to pre-state Palestine and its displaced persons camps, through the story of Ruth, whose family escaped the Nazis in Budapest and who spends much of her life on a kibbutz… in Tidhar’s hands the kibbutz is no rose-tinted utopian community, but a harbinger of savage dislocation and violence. It’s not an easy read, but Tidhar’s imagination is both Old Testament through and through, and sick with a 21st-century disenchantment.’ — Daily Mail
‘ADAMA is the second in an ambitious trilogy about the tumultuous birth of Israel, but can be read as a standalone. It is a brilliantly unsentimental portrayal, full of moral murkiness and tarnished hopes, with small, half-glimpsed bursts of joy.’ — The Times (UK), Best Historical Fiction of the Month
‘A novel of immense power that resists easy answers to difficult questions.’ — The Times
‘Word by word I was drawn deeper and deeper into this incredible book – a story of inheritance, loss, longing and what could have been. Lavie Tidhar’s prose is beautiful, his characters lacerating and heartbreaking by turns. I loved it.’ — Catriona Ward
‘Comparisons to James Ellroy and Marlon James are valid… On every page we feel we’re among real, breathing people… [a] compelling, unflinching roman-fleuve.’ — Times Literary Supplement (joint review of ADAMA and MAROR)
‘As a study of biblical comeuppance, the land and the blood have the last say. I recommend Adama as an instructive primer for today’s generation of Israeli politicians. There are, indeed, lessons to be learned.’ — Jewish Chronicle
‘This violent, shadowy history of a kibbutz family makes for a propulsive, decades spanning noir saga. I couldn’t put it down.’ — Silvia Moreno-Garcia
‘A family of Israeli kibbuitzniks pay in blood and grief over several generations for the liberty of their newly founded state through wars, treachery and love. A brutal but compassionate and compelling view of the compromises required to sustain a nation, with smugglers, gangsters, idealists, soldiers and crooked cops caught in the web of history.’ — Maxim Jakubowski
‘A brutal but compassionate and compelling view of the compromises required to sustain a nation, with smugglers, gangsters, idealists, soldiers and crooked cops caught in the web of history. Again, the kaleidoscopic approach forms a picture in which history and individuals fight haphazardly against fate, at times reminiscent of the word torrents of a James Ellroy in full flow, but with a larger sense of profane passion. Tidhar however never forgets the human factor involved and his colourful cast of anti-heroes rage against the night and a past they cannot escape and the interlaced stories truly grip as connections appear in the shadows of history. Powerful stuff.’ — Crime Time
