It’s Adama‘s official publication day today! Here is the official Bloomsbury Page.
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.
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
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