The novel that stunned—and scandalized—Europe comes to America
Wolf, a low-rent private detective, roams London’s gloomy, grimy streets, haunted by dark visions of a future that could have been—and a dangerous present populated by British Fascists and Nazis escaping Germany. Shomer, a pulp fiction writer, lies in a concentration camp, imagining another world. And when Wolf and Shomer's stories converge, we find ourselves drawn into a novel both shocking and profoundly haunting.
At once a perfectly pitched hard-boiled noir thriller (with an utterly shocking twist) and a “Holocaust novel like no other” (The Guardian), A Man Lies Dreaming is a masterful, unforgettable literary experiment from “one of our best and most adventurous writers” (Locus).
Industry Reviews
- Winner of the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize
- Shortlisted for the British Fantasy Award
- A Guardian Best Science Fiction Book of the Year
- A Scotland Herald Best Crime Novel of the Year "Stunning...very funny...remarkably poignant...[Tidhar] reminds us that even -- especially -- under the most terrible of circumstances, stories are all we have. And in the right hands, they can be a formidable weapon."
--The Washington Post
"Bold and unnerving...A Man Lies Dreaming is a book of big ideas, from the pathological origins of racist ideology to the way humanizing and dehumanizing those we love or loathe are flip sides of the same coin."
--NPR
"It's caustic. It's risky. The unexpected thing about the book is this: It's good. It's damn good."--Jewish Book Council
"[A Man Lies Dreaming] blends two venerable genres -- alternative history and noir mystery, with Hitler playing the gumshoe. Though this seems like a stretch, Tidhar makes it work. In keeping with the conventions of the genre, his writing is clipped and precise, but colorful enough to reinvigorate familiar tropes."
--The Forward
"A daring work, briskly paced and impossible to set down."--ALIVE Magazine
"Quite literally took my breath away."
--Cleaver Magazine
"Everything in this genre-bender works; intriguing historical characters are worked into expertly managed plots, and the visceral noir atmosphere is juxtaposed nicely against the drawing-room world of London's political scene."
--Booklist, starred review
"A wholly original Holocaust story: as outlandish as it is poignant."
--Kirkus, starred review
"Brilliant . . . Shocking . . . A twisted masterpiece . . . A Holocaust novel like no other, Lavie Tidhar's A Man Lies Dreaming comes crashing through the door of literature like Sam Spade with a .38 in his hand."
--The Guardian
"Theodor Adorno said that to write poetry after Auschwitz was barbaric. To which I would say, yes, but you can still write an excellent novel. A Man Lies Dreaming is that novel."
--Philip Kerr
"Readers may quickly get used to being ashamed of their laughter, but they may find it more unsettling to discover that their compassion feels equally transgressive . . . Weird, upsetting, unmissable."
--Telegraph (â â â â â )
"A sort of Holocaust noir or pulp that is at once as riveting as it is disturbing . . . There is eloquence and gravitas in the sparseness and brevity of noir fiction when it is good, and Tidhar's is quite incredible."
--Tor.com
From the Hardcover edition.
