Head of Zeus bags Tidhar's chronicle of Israel

Head of Zeus has acquired Maror by Lavie Tidhar, a "bittersweet" novel that chronicles the creation of the state of Israel through the lives of its people.

Chief executive officer and publisher Nicolas Cheetham obtained UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, from John Berlyn at the Zeno Agency. It will be published in hardback and e-book under the Apollo fiction imprint on 4th August 2022.

Maror asks how one builds a nation and draws on the author’s own experience of growing up in Israel and of its turbulent recent history to tell a story about creating identity.

"Across four decades and three continents, Lavie Tidhar seeks to give an answer," the synopsis states. "It takes statesmen and soldiers, farmers and factory workers, of course. But it also takes thieves, prostitutes and policemen. Nation-building demands sacrifice. And one man knows exactly where those bodies are buried: Cohen, a man who loves his country. A reasonable man for unreasonable times. A car bomb in the back streets of Tel Aviv. A diamond robbery in Haifa. Civil war in Lebanon. Rebel fighters in the Colombian jungle. An assassination in Cancún. How do they all connect? Only Cohen knows."

"James Joyce once said he couldn’t write of Ireland until he was away from her, and perhaps this is true of anyone’s home – that to be seen clearly it must be viewed from afar, with a love no longer blinded to the flaws," Tidhar said. "My publisher Nicolas Cheetham told me to write the book I always wanted to write, and the result is Maror: a huge, painstaking fictional exploration of very real events. It led me like a historical detective from one hard-to-believe event to the next. 

"Guided by a retired crime beat reporter, extensive newspaper archives and my father’s colourful stories, as well as my own recollections of growing up in Israel in the 80s and 90s, I began to piece together the true and secret story of a country I thought I knew but didn’t. It is a big book, in all senses of the word. It was exhilarating to write. And I can’t wait to share it."

Cheetham said: "Maror is the book Lavie Tidhar was meant to write. It is the book only Lavie could write. Over 560 pages, Lavie channels all his award-winning, subversive brilliance, not to mention his encyclopaedic knowledge of Israeli pop music, into a mosaic of stories and characters that distils four decades of life in Israel into its bittersweet essence."

Tidhar grew up on a kibbutz in northern Israel. He won the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize for Best British Fiction, was twice longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award and was shortlisted for the CWA Dagger Award and the Rome Prize. He co-wrote Art and War: Poetry, Pulp and Politics in Israeli Fiction (Repeater), and is a columnist for the Washington Post.