The Betrayers: A Novel, by David Bezmozgis
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The Betrayers: A Novel, by David Bezmozgis
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Winner of the National Jewish Book AwardA Wall Street Journal Best Book of 2014A New Yorker Favorite Book of 2014 New York Times Book Review Editor's ChoiceThese incandescent pages give us one fraught, momentous day in the life of Baruch Kotler, a Soviet Jewish dissident who now finds himself a disgraced Israeli politician. When he refuses to back down from a contrary but principled stand regarding the settlements in the West Bank, his political opponents expose his affair with a mistress decades his junior, and the besieged couple escapes to Yalta, the faded Crimean resort of Kotler's youth. There, shockingly, Kotler encounters the former friend whose denunciation sent him to the Gulag almost forty years earlier.In a whirling twenty-four hours, Kotler must face the ultimate reckoning, both with those who have betrayed him and with those whom he has betrayed, including a teenage daughter, a son facing his own moral dilemma in the Israeli army, and the wife who once campaigned to secure his freedom and stood by him through so much.Stubborn, wry, and self-knowing, Baruch Kotler is one of the great creations of contemporary fiction. An aging man grasping at a final passion, he is drawn inexorably into a crucible that is both personal and biblical in scope.In prose that is elegant, sly, precise, and devastating in its awareness of the human heart, David Bezmozgis has rendered a story for the ages, an inquest into the nature of fate and consequence, love and forgiveness. The Betrayers is a high-wire act, a powerful tale of morality and sacrifice that will haunt readers long after they turn the final page.
The Betrayers: A Novel, by David Bezmozgis- Amazon Sales Rank: #330187 in Books
- Brand: Bezmozgis, David
- Published on: 2015-06-23
- Released on: 2015-06-23
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.25" h x .75" w x 5.50" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 256 pages
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Most helpful customer reviews
40 of 43 people found the following review helpful. A compelling story By Ralph Blumenau David Bezmogis was born in 1973 in Latvia, then part of the Soviet Union, and emigrated with his family to Canada in 1980. Like his previous novel, The Free World (see my Amazon review), this one concerns Russian Jews.In the tense and extremely well-written Part One of the book the central figure, Baruch Kotler, is to some extent modelled on Natan Sharansky: both were born in Soviet Ukraine, both had been computer scientists, both had initially been refused permission by the authorities to emigrate to Israel though in each case the wife had been allowed to go, both had become Soviet dissidents, both had been sentenced to 13 years, first in the Lefortovo prison and then in the Soviet Gulag at Perm, both had then then able to leave for Israel where both had entered politics, headed a Russian faction in the Knesset and had a Cabinet post as Minister of Trade, but had resigned this in protest when the unnamed prime minister (but is it Sharon) was about to withdraw from unnamed settlements (they would have been the four West Bank settlements which, together with Gaza, were evacuated in 2005.) So far, so close is the story of Kotler to that of Sharansky; then pure fiction takes over:The government takes it revenge on Kotler and publishes compromising photographs of him: they were intended to destroy his reputation, but did not indicate that he had committed a crime. Even so, he impulsively runs away, together with his young mistress, to Crimea, where as a child he had spent happy holidays. (Post-Soviet Ukraine was by now independent and Crimea was still part of it.) That is quite hard to believe, and he will soon regret it. By an even more unbelievable coincidence, they rent a room from a woman called Svetlana who turns out to be married to Vladimir Tankilevich, a fellow-Jew who had for a time been his room-mate in Moscow, but who had forty years earlier betrayed him to the KGB. (The real name of Sharansky's room-mate and informer was Lipavsky.)In Part Two, the central figure is Tankilevich, now aged 70 and in poor health. This is not quite as vivid as Part One; but it shows how, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, he had become impoverished, was living in perpetual fear of being recognized by one of his former victims, had changed his name to Chaim and had adopted a new identity, with the connivance of the head of Hesed, a Jewish charitable organization in Simferopol, where there was a dwindling community of religious Ukrainian Jews.The rest of the book has the meeting between Kotler and Tankilevich and all the consequence which flow from that, and which I obviously must not give away - except to say that there are a lot of conversations between Kotler, Svetlana and Chaim: about God, fate and the wheel of fortune; about what makes one person strong and another weak; about why Tankilevich had done what he had done; about pride and about shame; about forgiveness and absolution; about running away and about duty. All this is interspersed with the arduous life for so many in Crimea and with Kotler's reactions to the intentions of his son, in the Israeli Army, to refuse the orders of his superiors to evict resistant settlers by force and his father's reactions to this. There is also a fine description about the relationship between Kotler and his mistress, and a wonderfully dignified email from his wife in Israel.As a rule I do not like novels which are part historical facts and parts facts which are clearly unhistorical, and normally also I would downgrade a novel which contains not just one but two major unbelievable events; but I found this novel so compulsively readable, so gripping and powerful, raising so many moral questions, and saying so much about two different societies that I have to rate it one of the best books I have read recently.
14 of 16 people found the following review helpful. Is being moral always being right? By Jill I. Shtulman In his epilogue, David Bezmozgis discusses the difference between journalism and fiction writing. He has this to say: “Journalism is reportage, and therefore retrospective. The novelist who tackles social and political phenomena has quite a different position. He must posit a world and commit to it fully. He cannot merely describe – he must anticipate an outcome, if only a little.”Mr. Bezmozgis could not have anticipated the flare-up in Israel when he wrote this book. Unfortunately, there are zealots who will note his character – Baruch Kotler, a Soviet Jewish hero and fierce advocate of the settlements, now an Israeli politician laid low by a smear campaign – and will one-star this book without reading further.That would be a crime. The Betrayers is a thoughtful and insightful book – a moral book – whose themes are timeless and universal. It’s also a beautifully written book that provides much food for thought about what it means to hold to one’s principles…and whether it’s better to be a saint who “loved the world more than any single person” or a “man who loved one single person more than the whole world.”Baruch Kotler is indeed saint-like; some might call him stubborn or even rigid. He does not sacrifice his principles even if his very life is at stake. After spending many years in jail – as the result of a former friend who denounces him to the KGB – he emerges as an Israeli hero. But when photos reveal that he has taken on a much younger lover, the couple is forced to flee to a Crimean resort. (All this is set up in the first several pages.) There, Baruch and Leora end up confronting the very friend who was the cause of Baruch’s misery years ago.The book explores major themes: is being moral always being right? Is there such a thing as absolute truth? Can rigid morality cause more harm than good? Are we all guilty of something, to a degree? Is "character" in-bred and is it possible for someone not born with character to acquire it? Are there different definitions of “doing right”, depending on what could be lost? What are the different ways we betray each other? (Mr. Bezmozgis writes, “…guilt and innocence were not fixed marks. There were extenuating circumstances. Wasn’t that the governing logic of the times?”)The Betrayers will make you think. It will also make you feel. Any book that can do that – and do it through wonderfully crafted prose and believable characters – is a 5-star book for me.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful. David Bezmorzgis is a fine writer, fluent and deep in his observation both ... By Shel As a novelist who has published four books with Jewish themes I read The Betrayers with an informed and critical eye, and possibly with some envy given all the positive attention that the author has gotten. This short novel is very well crafted. The characters breathe and the situation of the Refuseniks is well enunciated. David Bezmorzgis is a fine writer, fluent and deep in his observation both of Ukraine, and Israel. The characters are compelling. I had difficulty with the principal character, however. Given his strong personality, moral fibre, and responsible place in Israeli society I couldn’t quite accept his impulsive flight to Crimea with his young mistress. Aside from that, it’s a fine novel, one that shines a light on the weaknesses that often lurk behind the public persona and the tensions inherent in being an Israeli. Sheldon Greene
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