The Betrayers
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
The Betrayers by David Bezmozgis is a searing novel about a man whose principles are tested to the utmost extremes
'Impressive . . . alive to how reversals of fortune change individuals' Sunday Times
In a small crumbling resort in the Crimea, two men meet after many years apart. Kotler has fled Jerusalem with his young lover after taking a decision which has now cost him everything. Yet the other, Vladimir, would rather discuss the distant past: a long time ago, Kotler was betrayed and imprisoned - and now there must be a reckoning. With the world on his trail, Kotler would like nothing better than to hide. However, the consequences of decisions old and new return to haunt him . . .
'Gripping from the outset. Brilliant' Tom Rob Smith
'Compelling, rich, comic, profound' Financial Times
'Brave and ambitious' Independent
'Very impressive. As gripping as a political thriller, but probes issues of loyalty and betrayal more deeply than most thrillers ever aspire to do' James Wood, New Yorker, Books of the Year
David Bezmozgis was born in Riga, Latvia, in 1973 and emigrated with his parents to Toronto in 1980. His first novel, The Free World, was shortlisted for the Giller Prize and was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His collection Natasha and Other Stories was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and won the Commonwealth Writers' Regional Prize for First Book. His books have been translated into over a dozen languages.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bezmozgis's second novel (after The Free World) is a beautifully written exploration of the role fate can play in the finer distinctions between a heroic life and a villainous one. Baruch Kotler is a Soviet Jewish dissident who, after he is freed from prison, becomes a celebrated Israeli politician. When scandal forces Kotler to flee Israel for the Crimea with his mistress, Leora, a coincidence leads him to the door of Chaim Tankilevich, the man whose testimony led to Kotler's imprisonment in a Russian jail 39 years ago. With all the makings of a standard revenge tale and told in Bezmogis's trademark direct prose, the story resists oversimplification. Kotler and Tankilevich, now advanced in years, both suffered after Kotler's trial, and, though the trial is well behind them, both are now desperate in different ways. As the two men struggle with their past, Kotler contends with the scandal he fled, the family he left behind, and his son, Benzion, who aspires to be a dissident despite his now age-tempered father's advice against it. Though the action is fixed largely in one location, Bezmozgis's novel feels vast, its pages heavy with the complicated debts we owe one another, which are impossible to leave behind.
