Lavie Tidhar: A man lies dreaming (2016)
307 pages
English language
Published Aug. 22, 2016
"Wolf, a low-rent private detective, roams London’s gloomy, grimy streets, haunted by dark visions of a future that could have been--and a dangerous present populated by British Fascists and Nazis escaping Germany. Shomer, a pulp fiction writer, lies in a concentration camp, imagining another world. And when Wolf and Shomer's stories converge, we find ourselves drawn into a novel both shocking and profoundly haunting." --
On the one hand an enjoyable pulp romp through alternative history. On the other hand a challenging look through the mind of a pulp fiction author making it through “planet auschwitz”. Half the time I love what Tidhar tries to do in their novels, the other times i wonder what their obsession is with dreams/alternative worlds and why it eventually puts me off.
This might be good the way that Henry Miller might be good, or the way that Andrew Dice Clay might be funny, but sadomasochistic Holocaust revenge porn is not for me, even if it shows some cleverness in its design, is self-referential, and has footnotes.
