[books 2015] The Violent Century
53. The Violent Century by Lavie Tidhar
Lavie was on a panel I attended at Nine Worlds. He is an Israeli writer who lives in London and writes in English. I added him to my "to read" list in an effort to read more books by non-European people. This is the first one I was able to randomly pick up from the library.
This is a story of a parallel 20th century in which there are superheroes following some sort of scientific experiment by a German scientist in the 1930s. They are involved in their countries' efforts through WWII, the Cold War, Vietnam, etc but (I don't think this is too much of a spoiler) don't affect the material outcomes.
I had trouble getting into it because the style was a bit odd - it is more literary than I was expecting, which is not a bad thing, it just required more effort than I'd anticipated. However, it soon picked up and I quite enjoyed it. I felt slightly uncomfortable about reading the passages about the Holocaust knowing they were written by an Israeli. You don't really warm to the characters (except one, near the end), but I think that that is the point.
As alternate histories go, it was a really interesting take on the 20th century, and I'll definitely be looking out for more of his books.
Lavie was on a panel I attended at Nine Worlds. He is an Israeli writer who lives in London and writes in English. I added him to my "to read" list in an effort to read more books by non-European people. This is the first one I was able to randomly pick up from the library.
This is a story of a parallel 20th century in which there are superheroes following some sort of scientific experiment by a German scientist in the 1930s. They are involved in their countries' efforts through WWII, the Cold War, Vietnam, etc but (I don't think this is too much of a spoiler) don't affect the material outcomes.
I had trouble getting into it because the style was a bit odd - it is more literary than I was expecting, which is not a bad thing, it just required more effort than I'd anticipated. However, it soon picked up and I quite enjoyed it. I felt slightly uncomfortable about reading the passages about the Holocaust knowing they were written by an Israeli. You don't really warm to the characters (except one, near the end), but I think that that is the point.
As alternate histories go, it was a really interesting take on the 20th century, and I'll definitely be looking out for more of his books.