The betrayers - David Bezmozgis

The Betrayers by David Bezmozgis: read it in a sitting; remember it for the rest of your life.

Two men meet on a park bench in Jerusalem: a politician, on the eve of a controversial stand against his government, and a Mossad agent, sent to dissuade him with the threat of blackmail. Neither backs down.

Escaping the furore he's unleashed, the politician and his lover head to Crimea and a resort on the Black Sea to lie low. But the fierce battle between political principles and personal loyalties has followed them to this faded Russian backwater, and a shocking encounter awaits them.

In its depiction of a man whose principles are tested to the utmost extremes, The Betrayers cuts to the very heart of our troubled times.

'Gripping from the outset, as tightly structured as an intense theatrical experience, this is brilliant'
Tom Rob Smith

'A compelling tale of reckoning. Bezmozgis is a smart, taut writer . . . He brings alive pre-revolutionary Crimea' Financial Times

'An impressive novel . . . Bezmozgis explores the dynamics of mercy, guilt and repentence' Sunday Times

David Bezmozgis was born in Riga, Latvia, in 1973 and emigrated with his parents to Toronto in 1980. His first novel, The Free World, was shortlisted for the Giller Prize and was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His collection Natasha and Other Stories was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and won the Commonwealth Writers' Regional Prize for First Book. In 2010 he was selected as one of the New Yorker's '20 under 40', celebrating the twenty most promising fiction writers under the age of forty. His books have been translated into over a dozen languages.