Synopses & Reviews
A
Wall Street Journal Best Book of 2014
A New Yorker Favorite Book of 2014
New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice
These incandescent pages give us one fraught, momentous day in the life of Baruch Kotler, a Soviet Jewish dissident who now finds himself a disgraced Israeli politician. When he refuses to back down from a contrary but principled stand regarding the settlements in the West Bank, his political opponents expose his affair with a mistress decades his junior, and the besieged couple escapes to Yalta, the faded Crimean resort of Kotler's youth. There, shockingly, Kotler encounters the former friend whose denunciation sent him to the Gulag almost forty years earlier.
In a whirling twenty-four hours, Kotler must face the ultimate reckoning, both with those who have betrayed him and with those whom he has betrayed, including a teenage daughter, a son facing his own moral dilemma in the Israeli army, and the wife who once campaigned to secure his freedom and stood by him through so much.
Stubborn, wry, and self-knowing, Baruch Kotler is one of the great creations of contemporary fiction. An aging man grasping at a final passion, he is drawn inexorably into a crucible that is both personal and biblical in scope.
In prose that is elegant, sly, precise, and devastating in its awareness of the human heart, David Bezmozgis has rendered a story for the ages, an inquest into the nature of fate and consequence, love and forgiveness. The Betrayers is a high-wire act, a powerful tale of morality and sacrifice that will haunt readers long after they turn the final page.
Review
"When was the last time you tore through a work of literary fiction at the rate of a Tom Clancy thriller?...In The Betrayers, Bezmozgis's prose retains the extreme economy that won Natasha so many admirers, while rising to a whole new level of stylistic distinction... Bezmozgis has developed a daunting feel for structure and craft....It achieves a seamlessness that marks it as the most persuasive political novel in years....Even a novel as short as this has to make thousands of decisions; that Bezmozgis made so many smartly feels like a small miracle. The Betrayers can serve as a master class for fledgling writers, and an inspiration for any reader trying to figure out how novels will be saved." New York Times Book Review
Synopsis
A compact saga of love, duty, family, and sacrifice from a rising star whose fiction is "self-assured, elegant, perceptive . . . and unflinchingly honest" (
New York Times).
These incandescent pages give us one momentous day in the life of Baruch Kotler, a disgraced Israeli politician. When his political opponents expose an affair with a mistress decades his junior, Baruch flees the scandal for Yalta, only to encounter the former friend who denounced him to the KGB decades earlier.
In one day, Kotler must face the ultimate reckoning, both with his betrayers and with those whom he has betrayed, including a son facing his own ethical dilemmas in the army and the wife who stood by his side through so much.
In prose that is elegant, sly, and devastating, Bezmozgis has rendered a story for the ages, an inquest into the nature of fate and consequence, love and forgiveness.
About the Author
David Bezmozgis is an award-winning writer and filmmaker whose fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, Zoetrope, and Best American Short Stories. He was named one of the New Yorker's "20 Under 40" writers in 2010. He lives in Toronto.