‘A masterpiece of the sacred and the profane… A literary triumph.’ Jake Arnott, Guardian
MAROR
by Lavie Tidhar
Head of Zeus, August 2022
(via Zeno Agency)
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.
‘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
‘A sprawling epic set across four decades, and an audacious account of the underbelly of nation-building… Spectacular… Fascinating… Astonishing… Maror is a masterpiece of the sacred and the profane… Tidhar has achieved a literary triumph’ —Jake Arnott, Guardian
‘A bloody beast of a book.’ —Daily Mail
‘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.’ —CrimeTime
Lavie Tidhar was born just ten miles from Armageddon and grew up on a kibbutz in northern Israel. He has since made his home in London, where he is currently a Visiting Professor and Writer in Residence at Richmond University. He won the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize for Best British Fiction, was twice longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award and was shortlisted for the CWA Dagger Award and the Rome Prize. He co-wrote Art and War: Poetry, Pulp and Politics in Israeli Fiction, and is a columnist for the Washington Post.
In the heat of a long summer Ned hunts rabbits in a river valley, hoping the pelts will earn him enough money to buy a small boat. His two brothers are away at war, their whereabouts unknown. His father and older sister struggle to hold things together on the family orchard, Limberlost.
On the cusp of thirty, Coral learns that a thing is growing inside her body. It is not necessarily a complete disaster, she tells herself. I’m okay, she tells herself. Soon the thing inside her is the size of a plum. ‘Little Plum,’ she says, ‘Little Plum, I love you.’ And she wants to love it, the little plum. It’s just that she can’t yet think of it as what it is becoming: a baby, and not just a fruity morsel.
The truth doesn’t always set you free
• Winner of the HSS Award for Best Fiction Novel (2024)