Maror

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Now we have a successor … Lavie Tidhar, a marvelous multi-genre author who never fails to delight, has now penned his noir opus. The novel then follows Avi's boss Cohen, an even more crooked cop, back in time to the 70s and how his career progressed.

This is the first fifty pages of the book, and suddenly we are whipped thirty years back in time to the early seventies were Cohen is a fresh-faced cop and there might be a serial killer on the loose. There are so many elements to this book that I am still processing it but all I can say is that it is simply stunning and definitely a must read. It's crime fiction where the crimes become cumulative, where the idea of corruption and organized crime are exactly what a new nation requires for a certain kind of legitimacy. With a lot of water under the bridge, and with serious international business they’ve pulled off as part of the same general organization, it feels like it’s over as they head behind a building to take a piss. Through it all the elusive Cohen appears, and it's only by the end that I think he stands as a kind of spirit of Israel.

Maror is a raw account of the unspoken rules that keep society running, find a way to manage the black markets and the unethical deals trusted officials will make to maintain state funding. Tidhar advocates bringing international SF to a wider audience, and has edited The Apex Book of World SF (2009) and The Apex Book of World SF 2 (2012). Exposition is achieved by stealth, for example describing three people that walk past to show the diversity of the place. I did enjoy the writing and the most of the storylines but I didn't care if any of the protagonists survived.

Radiant with […] the richly nuanced complexity and style of Marlon James’ A Brief History of Seven Killings … Will catch your breath as it presents the history of Israel from unique points of view, with dazzling multi-generational scope. A number of short stories are told during the build-up of the Oslo accords, with the feeling of hope for change evoked across multiple viewpoints. Kippy takes us from Israel to Los Angeles and other US destinations where she acts as a drug mule and does lucrative deals.Throughout the narrative, a number of characters act as stand-ins for traits within Israeli culture. Maror is the story of a war for a country's soul – a dazzling spread of narrative gunshots across four decades and three continents.

Avi then heads to a big concert with his new girlfriend, but the crowd becomes ugly and surges through the small enclosed space, eventually pushing down the metal walls and dragging hundreds of kids across the barbed wire that topped the walls. 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. Israel as a nation, and those most dedicated to building the nation, don't come out looking pretty from this tale. A journal through the Israeli underworld, this is an epic, sweeping saga with drug dealing, murder, violence and history. In the 1990s it seemed that a basic requirement for Israeli pop groups was a hilarious name and on the excuse of a protagonist turning on the radio the author lists them all - or at least that is what it felt like.

Benny is at one stage tricked by Cohen into entering southern Lebanon during the first Israel-Lebanon war, to make a lucrative drug deal (of course). This is the first long-form novel I had read by the author and the short-stories I encountered were from the scifi/fantasy genre. In any case, for me it's a powerful piece of political storytelling as well as an absolutely rollicking crime novel. Like the best of Ellroy, it’s kill-’em-all howl of near despair without a vision of how the world might have been better but with a sense that, somehow, we took the wrong path. it's certainly a compelling read, although be warned it has a slightly non-traditional narrative structure, which did work well for the story that was being told but occasionally annoyed me.

It's hard for me to judge what impact it will have on those who've no familiarity with this topic at all. Maror are the bitter herbs eaten at Passover, and there are scriptural references throughout the book, not least from Cohen himself, who spouts chapter and verse. Nevertheless, he takes part in two separate instances where the wrong man is punished - first a mentally damaged ex-soldier, and later in the narrative a French tourist. There are constant opportunities to be exploited amid ideological struggles, as visionaries become racketeers. Maror' is the story of a war for the soul of Israel - a dazzling spread of narrative gunshots across four decades and three continents.

A police intelligence officer by name of Cohen — perhaps he is, perhaps not, Cohen the High Priest — is our guide through the convulsive years of the state after the 1967 Six Day War. Tidhar skillfully weaves themes of identity, memory, and the human condition throughout the story, making you ponder long after you've turned the last page. Another character who, like Benny, takes the amoral path with a certainty of its rightness is Kippy (aka Sarah Gavrieli). He also edited A Dick and Jane Primer for Adults (2008); wrote Michael Marshall Smith: The Annotated Bibliography (2004); wrote weird picture book Going to The Moon (2012, with artist Paul McCaffery); and scripted one-shot comic Adolf Hitler’s I Dream of Ants!