DAVID BEZMOZGIS

The Betrayers by David Bezmozgis: read it in a sitting; remember it for the rest of your life. "This unforgettable novel squanders no words in its brilliant, deft depictions of love, of memory, of compassion and, ultimately, despite its title, of loyalty". (Edith Pearlman). "Taut, fierce, forensically insightful. Compulsive and profound". (A D Miller). "A moral thriller". (Aleksandar Hemon). "Definitively establishes him as one of the foremost writers of his generation". (Ben Fountain). 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. 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.

L’any 1980 la família Berman es trasllada de la Unió Soviètica als suburbis de Toronto, Canadà. Serà Mark Berman qui, com si d’un àlbum familiar es tractés, repassarà les experiències tragicòmiques d

Meet the Bermans - Bella, Roman and their son Mark - Russian Jews who have fled the Riga of Brezhnev for Toronto, the city of their dreams. Natasha brings the Bermans - and the Russian Jewish enclaves of Toronto - to life in stories full of big, desperate, utterly believable consequence. In 'Tapka', six-year-old Mark's first experiments in English bring ruin and near tragedy to the neighbours upstairs. In 'Roman Berman, Massage Therapist', Roman and Bella stake all their hopes for Roman's business on their first, humiliating dinner with a North American family. In the title story, a stark, funny anatomy of first love, we witness Mark's sexual awakening at the hands of his fourteen-year-old cousin, a new immigrant from the New Russia.

Sus primeras experiencias con la nueva lengua, las nacientes posibilidades de negocio o el brote del sentimiento amoroso y sexual del menor, son algunas de estas historias en las que los Bermans viven el conflicto de la identidad, de la religion y de la cultura y que captan la experiencia del inmigrante con ingenio y hondura.Natasha, ha ganado varios premios literarios como el Commonwealth Prize for Best first Book o el National Magazine Award, ha sido escogida como el Mejor libro del año por el Chicago Tribune o libro imprescindible por el New York Times e incluida en la edicion de Best American Short Stories 2005, ha sido aclamada unanimemente por la critica anglosajona.

En 1978 el mundoestaba fracturado por el Telón de Acero, que había convertido en universos prácticamentedesconocidos los países que se encontraban al otro lado de ese muro aparentemente impenetrable. En verano de ese año,una familia de judios rusos, los Krasnansky, aprovechan su oportunidad de atravesar esa barrera y dejar atras el bloquesovietico para viajar a Roma y dar un paso mas hacia America, su destino definitivo. Son tres generaciones de una mismafamilia y sus reacciones y experiencias ante esa nueva realidad son muy dispares. Samuil, el patriarca , es un veteranodel Ejercito Rojo que hasta el ultimo momento se habia resistido a abandonar su patria y observa con recelo ese nuevomundo. Sus hijos y las esposas de estos, sin embargo, adoptan actitudes diferentes. El primogenito, Karl, que tiene doshijos, es un hombre pragmatico que se lanza a aprovechar las oportunidades que se presentan en la capital italiana. Encambio, Alec, el segundo hijo de Samuil, tiene una concepcion mas hedonista de la vida. Recientemente se ha casado conPolina, una bella mujer que se ha arriesgado dejandolo todo atras y que ahora esta abrumada ante ese nuevo eincomprensible escenario. Con un gusto por los detalles y una sensibilidad unica para captar la esencia de las personasy las situaciones, Bezmozgis narra con cariño, nostalgia y una pizca ironia los avatares de una familia que se vesometida a los imperativos politicos de una epoca agitada.