Lavie Tidhar's "Maror" is an absolute gem that deserves every bit of praise it receives. With his impeccable storytelling and imaginative world-building, Tidhar has crafted a novel that effortlessly bridges the gap between genres, offering readers a truly unique and captivating experience. This book is a delightful blend of science fiction, fantasy, and elements of the surreal, making it a must-read for those who crave originality and creativity in their literary adventures.

The characters in "Maror" are brilliantly crafted, each with their own distinct personalities and motivations that add depth to the narrative. Tidhar's writing style is a true marvel, with its poetic prose and a knack for painting vivid, otherworldly landscapes that transport you to the heart of the story.

What truly sets "Maror" apart is its ability to challenge your preconceived notions and provoke thought. 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.

In conclusion, "Maror" is a masterclass in speculative fiction, and Lavie Tidhar's talent shines brightly in every page. It's a thought-provoking, enthralling, and beautifully written book that I wholeheartedly recommend to any reader seeking a unique and immersive literary journey. Four stars are a well-deserved rating for this outstanding work.

I did not finish this book, it was too ´hard-boiled´ for me – I had the same experience with Don Winslow or ´Ace of Vice´ earlier this year. The premise and other reviews still make it sound very attractive, so I re-started multiple times, but ran into this same issue time and again.

Maror by Lavie Tidhar is a beautifully written and engaging novela that tells the story of a man searching for his true identity. The novella is structured as a series of interconnected vignettes that chronicle the protagonist's journey of self-discovery. Each vignette is a piece of a puzzle that gradually comes together to reveal the protagonist's traumatic past and the events that shaped his life.

Tidhar's writing style is poetic and evocative, making for a captivating and immersive reading experience. The novella's plot is intriguing and thought-provoking, with twists and turns that keep the reader engaged until the very end.

The novella's exploration of trauma and identity is both powerful and nuanced, with the protagonist's journey serving as a metaphor for the human experience of searching for meaning and purpose. The novella's themes of memory, trauma, and identity are expertly woven into the plot, making for a deeply moving and memorable read. Overall, Maror is a captivating novella that showcases Tidhar's exceptional storytelling skills and is sure to leave a lasting impression on its readers.

Maror is a story of war and corruption. Jumping between 4 decades and 3 countries this book has the potential to loose you in a complicated story line but the writing weaves the characters together so well that this isn't the case.

However, because it intertwines so many stories it's quite difficult to explain what happens. The character who stays throughout and links everything together is police officer Cohen. The book includes police, a lot of corruption, a lot of murder and a lot of drugs. All of this takes place alongside a changing Israel. Although a work of fiction whilst looking up reviews of the book I've discovered that many of the characters are based on real people involved with politics in Israel throughout the 4 decades the book is set. None of which are given particularly favourable storylines within the book.

The book definitely takes a lot of concentration but it's definitely worth while in the end.

This was my first time reading anything by Tidhar and it won't be the last, because the writing and the author's attention to detail was fantastic. Maror is a complex book, that spans across history and place, and has a considerable cast of characters - some of whom we don't get to spend enough time with. I am not as familiar with the history as I could me, so I felt like I learned a lot throughout, although there were some notable thread that wasn't really touched on - Palestine. Beyond that though this was an involved, expansive crime novel that didn't let itself be bound by that definition. The only thing beside that omission that let it down for me was the ending, which although it made sense and closed out the novel and its threads, felt not lacking - so as much as it could have been more?

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.

This is different. The author has taken real events and personalities from the last 60 years, changed a few names and woven them into a fictionalized history of organized crime in Israel.
If you are an Israeli, like me, there are many wry smiles as you recognizes the references. And there are so many, too many.
In the 1990s when 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.
Some of the events are barely relevant to the narrative but they seem to have been included simply because the author enjoyed retelling them.
Of course, in typically Israeli style it has to include a trip to the States and South America, though only the seediest locations.

The constant mentioning of events and cultural references did give the narrative a realistic feel of advancing through history though some of the events 'slipped' to a later date and some events were grouped together when they actually took place over more than one year.
There were also other editing errors such as the mixing –up of characters' names.

I did enjoy the writing and the most of the storylines but I didn't care if any of the protagonists survived.
And the author took the book's title from the bitter herb and seems to have included everything he found unpleasant or distasteful in Israeli society almost to the exclusion of anything else which it began to feel like an extended, angry rant: repetitive and wearing.

If you like your crime stories sleazy, seedy and sordid, full of drugs, criminals and explosions this maybe for you.

I have only read Lavie Tidhar's science fiction work, but that is so well-written and character driven that I had no doubt that he would be able to operate in a different genre. Maror is crime fiction, or to be more precise political crime fiction. It starts with what appears to be a terrorist bombing in Tel Aviv, and our appropriately scuzzy and deadbeat cop slowly unravels a case that starts to look more like organised crime. And a little more unraveling and he discovers that it might be organized crime but one of the organized parties is the police themselves. And it all seems to go back to one man - Cohen - not quite a Police Chief but he's always been there, and he's always been involved (and no-one likes him).

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. Cohen is never our viewpoint character, we waft in and out of the stories of other cops, journalists, criminals, and in one notable segment an actress cum drill instructor cum drug dealer. But Cohen is always there, slowly becoming more resigned to the ever-darkening grey areas within which he operates. That serial killer pops back up too as connective tissue, Cohen was related to the first victim and therefore has a personal stake in how or who is fitted up for the crime. And this is full of dirty deeds done pretty cheaply.

Whilst I think narratively that the serial killer plot is wrapped up a bit early and the actual ending isn't quite as punchy as I expected it to be, there is no denying that this is pretty brilliant stuff. 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. The book constantly touches on the Israeli state, there is a section about how illegal settlements become legal when no-one chases them down (and that this is broadly state policy anyway who cares). But it is a book about a rotten state being built that way. If the state is built on violence, then violence will permeate every aspect of it. None of this is ever done didactically, it reads like the grand thirty-year crime opus it is, and of course by the end it dares us to not just understand, but to even like Cohen.

No! No! No!

I had seen great reviews on this novel. However, now I’m wondering if I live in a parallel universe. I managed to read a few chapters hoping it would get better, instead it got worse. I skipped to the end – violence personified.

The blurb for the book gave no hint that it was about corruption of the highest order and that every page (or every second page) would seen another person shot dead. Just too much for me.

Elite Reviewing Group received a copy of the book to review.

I almost gave up with this violent sprawling narrative set over fifty years of Israeli history, because my initial interest was vitiated by the non-stop killings, beatings and torture that pepper the first chapters. The violence continues throughout the book and although I did come to accept it up to a point, feeling that it was indeed necessary for the author’s intentions, I still didn’t find this a comfortable or compelling read. Drug dealing, drug cartels, arms smuggling, corrupt politicians and corrupt policemen, ruthless murders, gangsters – it goes on and on. It’s an ambitious and kaleidoscopic state of the nation novel, with multiple characters, multiple plotlines, multiple locations, a tale of corruption, war, business and always ruthless murder. On a personal level I found it all just too much. The one constant thread uniting all the many disparate threads is the unsavoury character of Cohen, and I couldn’t relate to him at all. As a portrait of the shadier and more disreputable side of Israeli life, it feels authentic, and certainly the author claims that everything in the book is true. Many real life characters appear, even if only in cameo, and many others are composites or inspired by real people. On the basis of this book there’s something deeply rotten in the state of Israel, and overall I didn’t enjoy it.

4,25 / 5

Conocido por su amplísima obra dentro de la fantasía y la ciencia ficción, Lavie Tidhar estrena en este 2022 el casillero de novelas de ficción fuera de estos géneros trayéndonos una obra situada principalmente en Israel a medio camino entre la ficción histórica, la novela detectivesca y el thriller. De hecho, según el propio autor, todo lo que aquí se cuenta es real.

Un coche bomba a principios de nuestro siglo nos introduce a Cohen, un inspector de policía al más puro estilo Villarejo español, cuyas redes se extienden más allá del cuerpo policial israelí al que pertenece. Cuando empezamos a atisbar el alcance del tejido del cual forma parte central Tidhar nos lleva a la década de los años setenta donde conoceremos a un joven Cohen y los acontecimientos que le hicieron llegar a ser quien es en los 2000.

Maror se cuenta a través de múltiples pequeñas historias desde los setenta hasta entrado nuestro siglo. En cada una de ellas iremos conociendo diversos personajes. En la casi totalidad de ellas Cohen es un secundario que mueve sus hilos para favorecer a los estratos altos de Israel. Visitaremos Los Ángeles cuando la cocaína era abiertamente consumida, la jungla colombiana con tropas de las FARC siendo entrenadas por policías israelíes, o entraremos en el Líbano para resolver un problema inmobiliario. Todo ello da forma a la historia de Cohen y, en paralelo, la de la propia Israel.

Escrita con el particular estilo sarcástico y crudo de Tidhar, Maror es una gran novela que no descarto llegue en castellano a alguna editorial generalista. Una estructura en espiraldonde su final no conecta del todo con el inicio, pero donde todo se relaciona en forma de gigantesco puzle cuyas piezas esperan ser juntadas para intentar arreglar las vidas de todos aquellos (y no son pocos) que la dieron por un supuesto bien común.

Lavie Tidhar could write a shopping list and I would be happy to read and rate it 5*. That said you read the first page of this book and you know it will be a treat even if it's something more on the historical fiction/noir, an alternate retelling of the story of Israel.
A great book that i strongly recommend.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Maror is kind of hard to describe - it contains so much, covers so much ground and introduces so many characters, that a review risks missing the wood for the trees.

A lengthy book, in which Tidhar seems to enjoy the opportunity to swoop and circle his themes, it's a study of modern Israel, dramatised and explored using the lives of a varied bunch of characters. If you've read Tidhar's By Force Alone and The Hood, described as the "anti-Matter of Britain", which deconstruct the heroic myths of, especially, England, you might see some similarities in Maror although the latter is strictly realist - no magic, and cops rather than warriors (though drugs do feature here as in those books. There are also some allusions to Tidhar's SF - for example, I spotted a reference to the cover of his Central Station short story collection).

What we have is a book written in eighteen (shortish) parts which jump around different locations in Isreal, Lebanon, and further afield, mostly moving forward in time but occasionally jumping back to show earlier events. The almost-common theme is Cohen, policeman, crime boss, spy, husband, father, grandfather and so much more. It becomes clear early on that he is corrupt, indeed we see how this comes about, but Tidhar is quite shifty about what this amounts to. Is it a necessary corruption, Cohen doing the things that can't be seen to have official sanction? Or is he just on the make?

I suspect the truth is somewhere in between, with the consequences you'd expect: we see a murder enquiry deliberately botched to pin the blame on an innocent man, a journalist pressured to suppress inconvenient truths about dodgy land deals in the West Bank, and, as I have said, drug dealing and gangsterism on a grand scale, exploiting (or even driving) Israel's conflict in Lebanon. That trade also takes us to South America where drugs, mercenaries and crime bosses occupy a shifty, overlapping space. (There are many deaths in this book).

Alongside the cynical counter-history, Tidhar also gives a vivid portrayal of Israel - weaving in three decades of music with a sensual portrayal of young people living their lives (a fascinating tapestry, that, of kibbutzniks, youth workers, journalists, rookie cops and many others), of the food, the bewildering contrasts between different corners of what is a very small country. Political events make an impression, with hopes for peace undercut by repeated incursions into Lebanon and, eventually, by assassination and by a shift in the mood of the politics. There is a sense of decaying idealism, but also a recognition of wrongs buried in the founding history of the land: Arab villages that are no more, bodies buried on the beach. Cohen knows where the bodies are buried, he may have just some of them there himself, but best not talk about that...

Maror is a terrific read, well-observed, absorbing, deploying a vast number of characters and allowing them to come to life across years of time and miles of distance, some patterns recurring and others broken. It is a book with great humanity, showing people living their lives around great - and sometimes terrible - events.

Strongly recommended.

Science fiction and fantasy writer Lavie Tidhar turns to the very real history of Israel in his latest novel, Maror. This is not the first time Tidhar has used Israel as a setting for his work. But his award-winning Central Station is set around a Tel Aviv spaceport, and the multiversal Unholy Land imagines a state of Israel established in Uganda. Maror, by contrast, is based squarely on real events between 1976 and 2003. There are no speculative fiction bells and whistles here. Instead there is a peeling away of any veneer of respectability from the state’s founders and a glimpse of the underbelly of Israeli history.
Maror is a noir view of that history in the vein of James Ellroy’s Underworld USA trilogy (American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand, Blood’s a Rover) in which the America of the 1950s and 60s was reinterpreted through the eyes of the corrupt. The opening section of Maror, set in Tel Aviv in 2003 and featuring drugged-out cop Avi smashing his way through an investigation into the attempted car-bomb murder of a mob boss, feels like it is riffing on the cops in Ellroy’s LA Quartet, right down to the stripped-back narrative.
Following this twisted introduction, the narrative goes back to 1976 and from there proceeds chronologically through Israeli history. Benny’s rise from small-time hood to crime boss is chronicled, as is the rise of Eddie, an idealistic but corrupted police constable to commissioner, the vicissitudes of crusading journalist Sylvie, and Avi’s early years. As it progresses, the narrative takes in all of the key points of Israeli history – the first political win by the right-wing Likud party 30 years after the foundation of the State, the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, the training of drug cartels by ex-Israeli military, the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. All of these events are recontextualised by Tidhar, who follows the money, the power and the corruption.
While Maror is historical, it is more of a piece with Tidhar’s more recent works based on British mythology both in tone and structure. By Force Alone reinvents the Arthurian legend, presenting a king and his crew steeped in corruption and a lust for power. The Hood does something similar to the story of Robin Hood. Both By Force Alone and The Hood are structured similarly to Maror – a series of connected stories, told reasonably chronologically with the main actor of the piece often in the background. In Maror that character is Cohen, a corrupt policeman who is seemingly pulling the strings of much of the action. Cohen is the spirit of Tidhar’s version of Israel – a true believer, justifying everything he does as being for the good of the country, a man for whom the ends will always justify the means, whether that is fitting up a man with an intellectual disability as a murderer, or staging a car bomb for his own personal ends. Cohen is never the point of view character but he is always there, in the background, manoeuvring, manipulating and scheming.
In this context, even readers who are unaware of details of the tragic shooting of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 can understand why the moderate centre could not hold; why, in the end, money and ideology would win out over a desire for peace.
Maror is the word for the bitter herbs eaten by Jews at Passover, recalling the bitterness of the years of slavery. But here it takes on another meaning, of the bitterness, the corruption, that lies behind the myth of the state of Israel. It is based on the idea that this state is no different to any other, driven by money and grifters, but ironically this is seen as a success. In some ways, therefore, this is not a repudiation of Israeli history but rather an acknowledgement that it is driven by many of the same forces that underpin the histories of other western democracies.
Maror is a profane, irreverent, scathing, sometimes blackly humorous and often compassionate fever-dream history of Israel. It feels like the novel that Tidhar, already an award-winner for his speculative fiction, has been building up to, the perfect storm of his own history and interest in the state of Israel but also his clear fascination with the striving for, and the machinations of, power. Confronting, illuminating and thought-provoking, Maror is possibly his best yet.

The book was well written but it felt too disjointed for me to really feel invested in any part of it. The way the timeline jumped had me confused and my knowledge of Israel and its history wasn't strong enough for me to follow all the implications. I did finish because I really enjoyed how it was written but unfortunately this wasn't for me.

As I started this book, I wasn't sure, but I persevered and was rewarded, I really got into it and enjoyed it. It is the story of Israel, from the birth of the nation to the present day. It is told from a perspective of criminality, corruption, drugs, guns, violence and extortion, the armed forces and the police,
Some chapters laboured a little but others were wonderful. It straddles decades and continents and you wonder how it all connects, but it does. Very good.

Set in Israel, Maror starts out following Avi, a gumshoe detective who's a bit crooked. There's been a car bomb and a little girl is injured. The novel then follows Avi's boss Cohen, an even more crooked cop, back in time to the 70s and how his career progressed. It flips around timelines between the 70s and 2000s and everywhere in between.

I feel the blurb and classification was a little misleading for this one. It was in my suggested reads on Netgalley even though I don't read crime novels. The blurb said it would appeal to fans of The White Tiger which I love but it's a very different type of book. If crime, specifically gangster crime is your thing, this book might be for you. (Very specifically not a detective novel, no crime is solved so it'll leave your Agatha Christie fans cold)

You might need to bone up on your Israel knowledge beforehand. If you're not very familiar with Israel, its history, colloquialisms, politics, culture etc this author is not going to help you out. You can Google or let it pass by really. For a book set in Israel there is very little Palestine, it's like a giant elephant in the room, looming but seldom mentioned, even though parts of the book are set in occupied territories. It seems to do a little shrug at the whole issue.

This book has approximately 275 main characters! Ok slight exaggeration but it genuinely has so many characters that we learn all about and then often never see again, or their significance is lost in the crowd. It's too many books crammed into one. It's so many stories that none of them are properly told and you're left feeling dissatisfied with the whole thing. They all sort of intertwine and come together at the end but there's so many that by the time you get there you don't really care any more. I can see what the author was trying to do but it feels like trying to be clever with connections and twists backfired on this occasion.

You know sometimes people describe a book as "chick lit" and I hate to see that used in a disparaging way. I feel though that the best way to describe where this book fits is "man lit" Maybe I just don't have the means to appreciate men shooting other men in the back of the head at regular intervals.

Too many timelines, characters, locations and plotholes for my liking. A decent crime novel but not for me.

There is so much in this book. It's about big things like nation building an criminal syndicates, and small things like families and parties. It's about whether the end justifies the means, or if using that logical is a perversion. It's about people as ciphers for countries, it's about men and what they do to women and to each other. Look, I read it, I loved it, but I don't really know what it was about.
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.

To sum up - I'm glad I read this and i'm still working out what it is I'm taking way from it.

Thanks to NetGalley for the review copy in exchange for an honest review.

I have never heard of Lavie Tidhar before but was intrigued by the premise of Maror. The meaning of the Hebrew word maror is bitter herbs, and the title encapsulates the book perfectly.

Descrobed as a state-of-the nation book the publicity blurb goes as follows:
'Across four decades and three continents, Lavie Tidhar seeks to give an answer. 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. '

So, Maror is a complex multi-generational saga that veers between the political landscape of modern Israel and gangsters who run riot, hunted down by the main character, Cohen. I sensed residual anger on the part of the writer as the book progressed and I wonder if he felt this while writing the book?

As a secular Jewish woman who first visited Israel soon after the Six Day War I found the book riveting but wonder who the audience for it will be? For me the Israelis in the story are not shown in a good light and I worry that in today's clmate this may well feed anti-Semites and anti-Zionists, and more hatred of Jews. It is the book that Mr Tidhar 'has always wanted to write' but I didn't find any redeeming characters who might have given a more balanced view of modern Israel. Nevertheless I give Maror 5*.

For those who do not know, until 1947 when the United Nations partition plan created the State of Israel and the ending of the British Mandate dating from after the First World War, the area was known as Palestine. The Jews and Arabs who co-existed there were collectively Palestinians but usually referred to as Jews and Arabs.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Head of Zeus/Apollo for the opportunity to read and review this book.

A journal through the Israeli underworld, this is an epic, sweeping saga with drug dealing, murder, violence and history. It might help to have a little knowledge of Israeli history as keys moments from that countries past feature centrally here, and Tidhar doesn't take the easy route of leading his reader by the hand.

The writing is uniformly excellent, tense and thrilling. This is intelligent crime writing and highly recommended.

Thank you to the publishers and Netgalley for the ARC.

I think I misread the initial blurb for this book when I requested it from.Netgalley.. I read about 100 pages and thought about abandoning it as the subject matter wasn’t really me. For some reason I carried on reading and I’m so glad that I did!
I can’t claim to know much about Israel/Palestine or their history so this novel was really informative. I felt I learnt a lot about politics and the murky underbelly of the drug cartels operating.in this area. All in all I thoroughly enjoyed the book