The Violent Century

[Dave Monroe]

The Violent Century
By Lavie Tidhar

    Paperback
    £13.99

They'd never meant to be heroes.

For seventy years they guarded the British Empire. Oblivion and Fogg,
inseparable friends, bound together by a shared fate. Until one night
in Berlin, in the aftermath of the Second World War, and a secret that
tore them apart.

But there must always be an account... and the past has a habit of
catching up to the present.

Now, recalled to the Retirement Bureau from which no one can retire,
Fogg and Oblivion must face up to a past of terrible war and
unacknowledged heroism, - a life of dusty corridors and secret rooms,
of furtive meetings and blood-stained fields - to answer one last,
impossible question:

What makes a hero?

    Other details

    ISBN: 9781444762884
    Publication date: 24 Oct 2013
    Page count: 352

Biographical Notes

Lavie Tidhar is the World Fantasy Award winning author of Osama, of
The Bookman Histories trilogy and many other works. He also won the
British Fantasy Award for Best Novella, for Gorel & The Pot-Bellied
God, and was nominated variously for BSFA, Campbell, Sturgeon,
Kitschies and Sidewise awards. He grew up on a kibbutz in Israel and
in South Africa and currently resides in London.

Lavie can be found online at http://lavietidhar.wordpress.com or on
twitter @lavietidhar
.
An emerging master. — Locus

Young, ambitious, skilled and original. — Christopher Priest, author
of The Prestige.

He is a political writer, an iconoclast and sometimes a provocateur
... Osama is a remarkable and ambitious work. — China Mieville on
Osama.

Where do heroes come from? How are friendships made? What makes us
human? These are the questions that Lavie Tidhar grapples with, in
this story of friendship writ large upon a canvas that stretches from
the 1930s to the present day, in a slightly alternate world where
superheroes exists, but heroics mean different things to different
people. Choices made in the second world war resonate down through a
series of brilliantly detailed cold war scenes, ultimately wrestling
with the idea of the self. This is a big, ambitious book that manages
to deliver. — http://glen.mehn.net/2013/08/100-word-review-the-violent-century-by-lavie-tidhar/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=100-word-review-the-violent-century-by-lavie-tidhar
- Glen Mehn

vintage Lavie, and also I think his most fully accomplished novel yet.
Nobody rides that fast-rolling wave separating schlocky pulp and
serious literary sensibilities so deftly as Tidhar. He manages to make
serious points about the benighted twentieth-century and its obsession
with 'supermen' without ever letting the narrative slacken or the
adventure pale. If Nietzche had written an X-Men storyline whilst high
on mescaline, it might have read something like VIOLENT CENTURY. —
blurb - Adam Roberts, author of Jack Glass

An alternative history tour-de-force. Epic, intense and authentic.
Lavie Tidhar reboots the 20th century with spies and superheroes
battling for mastery - and the results are electric. — Tom Harper -
Author of THE ORPHEUS DESCENT

Dig it, kats and kittens: THE VIOLENT CENTURY is a brilliantly etched
phantasmagoric reconfiguring of that most sizzling of eras - the
twilight 20th. Lavie Tidhar lays it out like a dystopian dog!!! This
book has it ALL: time travel, political intrigue, hellacious history
itself!!! You've got superheroes in the guise of regular humans,
you've got World War II!!! Viva Lavie Tidhar - "The Violent Century"
is a torrid tour de force!!!!! — James Ellroy

Tidhar has written a fantastic novel... I can't wait to read Osama and
anything else of his that I can get my hands on... Definitely
recommended. — Civilian Reader

A love story and meditation on heroism, this is an elegiac espionage
adventure that demands a second reading. — Metro

Provides an insight into what it takes to be human, and what can
happen when we lay that humanity aside. It's a powerful novel, which
will no doubt reward rereading. — Sci-Fi bulletin



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