I recently finished Unholy Land by Lavie Tidhar. The idea behind it is a doozy.
Lior Tirosh is a Palestinian pulp fiction writer. Which is to say he lives in Palestina, a Jewish homeland carved out of a section of Africa east of Uganda after an expedition and vision by Nahum Wilbusch, a figure who in real life sabotaged this same idea in favor of settlement in the Middle East. Unassuming, he still lies at the center of political intrigue. a policeman named Bloom keeps surveillance on him. Bloom has more on his plate than the standard issue murder, terrorism, and espionage. There's also a figure named Nur. She comes from further afield, a world that didn't have a Palestina.
My taste in science fiction is shaped in large part by writers originally from the mid-20th century like Philip K. Dick and Michael Moorcock. Tidhar, who I previously only knew by reputation, fits into this company even if his name doesn't contain a slang term for "penis." That I know of. One thing about placing your Israel analogue in Africa is that it lets you put African wildlife in the background, and African natives closer to the front. Tidhar also uses the trick―initially confusing but you get used to it―of using different persons in narrating the viewpoints of each protagonist: third for Tirosh, first for Bloom, second for Nur. This is something I could see the Brian Aldiss of Report on Probability A doing.
Weird and ambitious all around.
Lior Tirosh is a Palestinian pulp fiction writer. Which is to say he lives in Palestina, a Jewish homeland carved out of a section of Africa east of Uganda after an expedition and vision by Nahum Wilbusch, a figure who in real life sabotaged this same idea in favor of settlement in the Middle East. Unassuming, he still lies at the center of political intrigue. a policeman named Bloom keeps surveillance on him. Bloom has more on his plate than the standard issue murder, terrorism, and espionage. There's also a figure named Nur. She comes from further afield, a world that didn't have a Palestina.
My taste in science fiction is shaped in large part by writers originally from the mid-20th century like Philip K. Dick and Michael Moorcock. Tidhar, who I previously only knew by reputation, fits into this company even if his name doesn't contain a slang term for "penis." That I know of. One thing about placing your Israel analogue in Africa is that it lets you put African wildlife in the background, and African natives closer to the front. Tidhar also uses the trick―initially confusing but you get used to it―of using different persons in narrating the viewpoints of each protagonist: third for Tirosh, first for Bloom, second for Nur. This is something I could see the Brian Aldiss of Report on Probability A doing.
Weird and ambitious all around.
2 comments:
I don't often get the urge to read a new science fiction author, but you've convinced me to find a copy of this one. The premise sounds fascinating and from what you've described the author must have a pretty sophisticated sense of irony. I used to think Florida would have been the perfect homeland, but I was more simple-minded in those days. Nowadays I just keep my fingers crossed.
Let me know what you think. I hope you like the book. As I said (I think), Tidhar strikes me as being ambitious in a way that some science fiction writers of the 1960s were, that you don't really see a lot of now.
The Israeli-Palestine situation has been a knotty one from the star. That's not too bad, as long as people don't think it's simpler than it really is.
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