The Times Best Historical Novels of 2023 Selection
There is no adama without dam – no land without blood.
In 1946, a young Ruth begins building a new life in Palestine, haunted by the death of her family in Europe and driven by youthful ideals in a land hostile to her presence. Her sister, Shoshana, survives in the Displaced Persons camps of Germany and joins her in Palestine, but dreams of escaping to distant America.
Her lovers, Dov and Israel, die in war and misfortune, and her children try to serve the land Ruth bled for, only to find their own tragic ends or means of escape. As one generation begets another, their lives become entwined into a dark tapestry of secrets and lies, of 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.
BLURBS
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 Díaz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
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, Sunday Times best-selling author of Sundial
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, Best-selling author of Mexican Gothic and Velvet was the Night
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, Anthony and CWA Dagger Award winning author and anthologist of Black is the Night
WHAT THEY SAY
Israeli literature has long been dominated by veteran heavyweights David Grossman and the late Amos Oz. 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… 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.
The Daily Mail
A brilliantly unsentimental portrayal, full of moral murkiness and tarnished hopes, with small, half-glimpsed bursts of joy.
The Times
Everyone gets what’s coming to him or her in Lavie Tidhar’s new work – a novel all Israeli politicians should read … in Adama everyone is preying or feasting on everyone else lower down the food chain. … As a study of biblical come-uppance, the land and the blood have the last say. There are, indeed, lessons to be learned.
The Jewish Chronicle
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.
TLS
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
A mesmerising and magnetic historical epic… Drawing the reader in from the first beautifully crafted sentence, it’s a tale of inheritance, revenge, loss, love and longing. Memorable.
The Sunday Post
BUY
Lavie Tidhar 