Unholy Land

by Lavie Tidhar

Lior Tirosh is a semi-successful author of pulp fiction, an inadvertent time traveler, and an ongoing source of disappointment to his father.

Tirosh has returned to his homeland in East Africa. But Palestina—a Jewish state founded in the early 20th century—has grown dangerous. The government is building a vast border wall to keep out African refugees. Unrest in Ararat City is growing. And Tirosh’s childhood friend, trying to deliver a warning, has turned up dead in his hotel room. A state security officer has identified Tirosh as a suspect in a string of murders, and a rogue agent is stalking Tirosh through transdimensional rifts—possible futures that can only be prevented by avoiding the mistakes of the past.

From the bestselling author of Central Station comes an extraordinary new novel recalling China Miéville and Michael Chabon, entertaining and subversive in equal measures.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Fiction, Alternate History, Mystery, Jewish, Speculative Fiction

288 pages, Paperback

First published October 16, 2018

About the author

Lavie Tidhar was raised on a kibbutz in Israel. He has travelled extensively since he was a teenager, living in South Africa, the UK, Laos, and the small island nation of Vanuatu.

Tidhar began publishing with a poetry collection in Hebrew in 1998, but soon moved to fiction, becoming a prolific author of short stories early in the 21st century.

Temporal Spiders, Spatial Webs won the 2003 Clarke-Bradbury competition, sponsored by the European Space Agency, while The Night Train (2010) was a Sturgeon Award finalist.

Linked story collection HebrewPunk (2007) contains stories of Jewish pulp fantasy.

He co-wrote dark fantasy novel The Tel Aviv Dossier (2009) with Nir Yaniv. The Bookman Histories series, combining literary and historical characters with steampunk elements, includes The Bookman (2010), Camera Obscura (2011), and The Great Game (2012).

Standalone novel Osama (2011) combines pulp adventure with a sophisticated look at the impact of terrorism. It won the 2012 World Fantasy Award, and was a finalist for the Campbell Memorial Award, British Science Fiction Award, and a Kitschie.

His latest novels are Martian Sands and The Violent Century.

Much of Tidhar’s best work is done at novella length, including An Occupation of Angels (2005), Cloud Permutations (2010), British Fantasy Award winner Gorel and the Pot-Bellied God (2011), and Jesus & the Eightfold Path (2011).

Tidhar advocates bringing international SF to a wider audience, and has edited The Apex Book of World SF (2009) and The Apex Book of World SF 2 (2012).

He is also editor-in-chief of the World SF Blog , and in 2011 was a finalist for a World Fantasy Award for his work there.

He also edited A Dick and Jane Primer for Adults (2008); wrote Michael Marshall Smith: The Annotated Bibliography (2004); wrote weird picture book Going to The Moon (2012, with artist Paul McCaffery); and scripted one-shot comic Adolf Hitler’s I Dream of Ants! (2012, with artist Neil Struthers).

Tidhar lives with his wife in London.

Reviews

[Magrat Ajostiernos · Rating 5 out of 5]

"El mundo es la suma de lo que podría ser, lo que podría haber sido y cómo podría haber sido"

Esta es básicamente la mejor historia de realidades paralelas que he leído.
Además, es una novela que juega con el lector una y otra vez, que lo engaña con esos narradores y su juego de espejos, que empieza siendo un noir clásico de detectives (aunque el detective es un escritor de poca monta en este caso) y que gira sobre sí mismo para convertirse en algo muy distinto y muchísimo más fascinante (tendréis que leerlo para ver el nivel de locura y maravilla).
Y luego está el contexto, la ambientación, esa autocrítica hacia el pueblo judío destinado a cometer los mismos errores aún en otros universos. En África también se construyen muros y caen las bombas...
Es una historia que se nota que tiene mucho del autor, que también es escritor, también nació en Israel y también vivió en África. Hay muchos pasajes completamente impactantes y que impresionan, y también momentos en los que te da la risa por esa mirada tan cínica y cómica del autor en todo lo que hace.
Tierra profana es una de esas novelas que simplemente te vuelan la cabeza, te atrapan y obsesionan, de esas para debatir, reflexionar, de las que no quieres salir y que cuando se terminan te gustaría volver a empezar.

"Porque finalmente esta es la huella mas clara que ha dejado Tidhar en nuestra literatura: una osadía sin límites que lo lleva a explorar las fronteras de múltiples géneros y al mismo tiempo enriquece nuestros anaqueles. Las novelas de Tidhar son inteligentes e intrépidas, y en algunos años, cuando muchas de las historias de multiversos hayan caducado, creo que Tierra profana mantendrá su poderío narrativo". Silvia Moreno-Garcia

[Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lior Tirosh, the main character in Lavie Tidhar's novel, may as well be the author. I mean, the author certainly seems to think so, both being more or less a self-described semi-successful pulp-fiction writer of SF, and like writers being in their own stories, they tend to go absolutely nuts on the imagination bits.

Well, at least, the good ones do. And guess what? He's one of the good ones. :)

This book wears several hats and unlike a normal hat-trick, this one does it gently enough that we barely even realize we've gone from a noir mystery in an alternate history to jump headlong into an existential crisis across multiple Earths where neither memory, history, or selfhood is set in stone.

Add to that the wonderful little twist where this is a history where Isreal never happened, where the grand refuge takes place in Africa... a thing that really and truly MIGHT have happened... throw in the Zohar and wonderfully interesting quasi-religious ideas that drive the Qabbalah, including the words of God and reading the Torah from a prism of different experiences and world-building viewpoints, and we've got a much deeper reading experience than anyone might assume from a first glance.

In fact, even tho the actual tale is fun to follow and only gets more and more interesting even as it amps up the bloodshed and deeper mystery, it deserves another read-through for the subtext. It's not just about the Jewish condition although that is a big part. It's about identity on a much deeper level.

I only read Central Station before this and both are very different beasts, but neither of them is lightweight or pulp in nature. Indeed, I'm rather thrilled at how many levels both succeeded.

Unholy Land is probably BETTER than Michael Chabon's Yiddish Policeman's Union, by the by. The other had them all retreat to Alaska and this one had them wind up in Africa, but the true joy isn't in the location. It's in everything. :)

[Gary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lavie Tidhar’s sci-fantasies swirl around in a nexus of dreams and memories and imagined realities, soaking through pages of pulpy detective potboilers and silver-age sci-fi brain benders. They are also intensely personal, perhaps none more so than his new novel, Unholy Land. The novel’s hero, a writer named Lior Tirosh, bears not only his creator’s initials but seems to have also written all his novels. This is typical of Tidhar’s metaphysics, where the truth of one reality is the daydream of another.
In Unholy Land, Tirosh travels from Berlin to the Jewish homeland of Palestina in east Africa, where he was born and much of his family still lives. Not long after he arrives, Tirosh finds an old schoolmate murdered in his hotel room. His niece also goes missing while protesting the construction of a wall meant to keep refugees out of the country. Tirosh, confusing himself with the low-rent detectives he often writes about, “takes the case.” His profession isn't the only thing confusing him: this reality might not even be the only one he occupies.
Palestina has real historical precedent: Tidhar’s introduction explains how the Zionist Congress had once surveyed land in British East Africa as a proposed solution to Europe’s “Jewish problem.” They found the land unsuitable, but many years later, one surveyor remarked that if they had established a Jewish Homeland there, the Holocaust may never have happened. With Unholy Land, Tidhar slips into the role of Leguin’s George Orr, willing one solution to the disaster of history that, hydra-like, sprouts new disasters in its place. All the anxiety, horror, and heartbreak attending the endless cycles of injustice that haunt our world find vivid expression in his works, and Unholy Land may cut the deepest.

Palestina has real historical precedent: Tidhar’s introduction explains how the Zionist Congress had once surveyed land in British East Africa as a proposed solution to Europe’s “Jewish problem.” They found the land unsuitable, but many years later, one surveyor remarked that if they had established a Jewish Homeland there, the Holocaust may never have happened. With Unholy Land, Tidhar slips into the role of Leguin’s George Orr, willing one solution to the disaster of history that, hydra-like, sprouts new disasters in its place. All the anxiety, horror, and heartbreak attending the endless cycles of injustice that haunt our world find vivid expression in his works, and Unholy Land may cut the deepest.

[Berengaria · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars

short review for busy readers: alt history/sci-fi multiverse mash-up about world-hopping Jewish Time Agents and a lost sci-fi writer. Some really cool elements, but often confusing. Too many ingredients and genre mixes definitely over-salted the soup on this one.

in detail:
What a cool concept for an alternate history story! In the early 1900s, British PM Chamberlain offered the Zionist Conference land in several places in the British Empire to establish a Jewish homeland. One of them was British East Africa, today the northern part of Uganda. (true story!)

What if the Conference had accepted the offer and not have held out for Palestine? What would a Jewish state in Africa look like?

If this novel could, and probably should, have stopped with that concept. But Tidhar - being a sci-fi writer - was not content with a mere alt history, but for some reason needed throw all the leftovers in the fridge into the plot --time travel, a murder mystery, a love story, a thriller chase, mistaken identity, spies, political commentary, and and and and and -- until the story becomes utterly confused and you are not sure what's really going on for a very long time.

But don't feel bad, because neither does our MC, a sci-fi writer who accidentally found his way into the Jewish multiverse and has to be extracted or killed by Time Agents. (The Jewish multiverse = the Tree of Life from the Kabbalah! How COOL!)

This crazed mix 'n match fusion kitchen salad of a story could have worked just fine if it were not for one tiny thing: Tidhar's lean, very direct writing style.

I generally very much approve of low cal writing, but in this case the bare bones approach does not work. It is as if about 150 to 200 pages are missing from the story that definitely need to be there. At points, you can glimpse what this novel might have been if only more word gravy, lots more word gravy!, had been applied.

Shame. This really had some awesome potential.

[Gabrielle (Reading Rampage) · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was another amazing mindfuck from the brain of Mr. Lavie Tidhar and I loved it! It's weird, self-referential, thought-provoking and tinged with sadness. If Philip K. Dick had been Jewish and written Mieville's "The City & the City" (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), this is the book he would have written.

A writer named Lior Tirosh goes back home to Ararat City, the capital of Palestina - the Jewish state in East Africa. He doesn't know he is being followed, or that anything about this trip is unusual until an old childhood friend meets him at his hotel to talk about the brewing war caused by the building of a border wall meant to keep refugees out. Before he knows what has happened, Tirosh is accused of murdering said friend and falls down a rabbit hole of secret agencies, parallel worlds and mysticism.

I had heard that before the founding of Israel, Eastern Africa had been proposed as one of the location for a new Jewish state. I love what Tidhar did with this idea, even if the ultimate conclusion seems to be that humanity makes the same mistakes regardless of how history unravels.

Tidhar's prose is great, pulpy without being trashy, vivid and fluid. His story is wonderfully mysterious, his use of first, second and third person narration convoluted but come together beautifully. I was happy for years of fussing around with the Kabbalistic interpretation of Crowley's Thoth tarot, as he uses Jewish mysticism and it's concept and symbols to build his world very cleverly.

Tidhar really is something else. I read 6 of his books last year, and I feel like I'm going to keep getting my hands on everything he writes. Highly recommended for fans of speculative fiction, alternate history and good mysteries.

[Lata · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alternate realities coupled with an interesting historical fact that at one time there was idea of creating a country in Africa next to Uganda for Jews. A writer, Lior Tirosh, returns to this country to see his ailing father, and soon becomes embroiled in murder and terrorist plots. Government security and other organizations are spying on Lior, concerned about his possible involvement with terrorists, and in which reality he should reside, while Lior rushes about looking for his disappeared niece. (The story had a slight Kafkaesque feel to it.) Though all of these elements were interesting, I felt Lior's character and the story’s direction were elusive at times.

[Oleksandr Zholud · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a sci-fantasy / alt-history novel about a Jewish homeland in the middle of Africa. The book intentionally mixes genres and plays meta-fiction, while remaining a fast-paced yarn.

In the early 20th century, the newly formed Zionist movement was looking for a land for Jewish people. There were suggestions for settling in El-Arish in Egypt; Cyprus; Anatolia; Argentina and the British East Africa. For the latter, a special expedition was sent in 1904 to a territory near the Lake Victoria, between the current day Uganda and Kenya. The Jewish representative with the expedition, Nahum Wilbusch, after returning compiled a negative report, quite possibly because he was a secret holylander (a Zionist, who believes that only return to the Holy Land, Israel, was the way to go). This is true story. The alt-history of this novel assumes that Jews agreed for this land and emigrated in mass from Europe, changing the 20th century’s history. There was no holocaust; the WW2 was ’just’ a British-German conflict; there are no tensions in the Middle East.

Our protagonist, Lior Tirosh (clearly an allusion to the author Lavie Tidhar) is a semi-successful SF and detective story writer, with novels like Death Stalks the Graveyard or The Corpse Had No Face. As his agent notes about likes of him, a gaggle of desperate-looking crime and fantasy writers: their only fantasy was that they were successful, and their only crimes were committed against literature. He returns from Berlin to Palestina (in Africa) to visit his dying father, a retired general, the hero of the state. From the start, he is shadowed by some people, who know his for a traveler between worlds.

Two other protagonists are also present – a special agent trained for interdimensional travels, woman named Nur and an agent for Palestinian security, man named Bloom. Their stories are made additionally distinct by an interesting writing trick: Lior’s story is in the third person, Nur’s the second and Bloom’s the first.

Tirosh founds himself in the middle of something big: his friend from the days of old is murdered in his apartments, but only after he informs Tirosh that Tirosh’s niece disappeared. Lior moves into shoes of his fictional sleuths and starts investigating, from time to time getting hit in the head or set up for a murder, quite 30s-like pulp novels.

While the story is interesting, it doesn’t really goes anywhere. Even the big reveal in the end doesn’t feel satisfactory. The author is fascinating enough for me to try his other work.

Tirosh had found solace in the refuge that Waxman’s offered. He spent hours in the dark maze of the shop, reading the latest issue of Yiddish Excitement Quarterly or Thrilling Hebrew Tales. He followed the adventures of Sheriff Zeidelman as he hunted down the notorious bank robber Birnbaum, or squared off against the evil kidnappers Shlemiel and Shleimazal. He held his breath as Abe “Space Ace” Haisikowits found himself trapped inside the Star of Zion, the spaceship’s atomic engines stalled somewhere off the Crab nebula. But most of all he loved the tales of Avrom Tarzan, the Judean Jungle Boy, as he battled Ugandan poachers, dove to the depths of Lake Victoria to find the missing diamonds of the Queen of Sheba, and searched for lost cities of gold in the depths of the Congo, all with the help of his trusted companion, Ephraim the elephant.

***
Jerusalem, the city to which all other cities are but imperfect acts of mimicry: a city in which stories are told. They are stories of bloodshed and stories of wars, of love, of faith—
Erased, in this world, with one awful act, turned into stone, a history suspended.
“Who did this?” you whispered. You held on to his hand.
Anwar turned, shrugged.
“We did. They did. Does it matter?”

***
“With a special interest in—what is that? science fiction?”
“It was a way of imagining futures,” you say—a little defensively, perhaps. “Multiple futures.”
“In my experience,” Professor Hashimi says, “the future happens regardless of what you imagine.”
“If you say so.”
You can’t really explain to him. To them. What it was like growing up in Hebron in the shadow of the Absence, long after the world changed. What it was like to read those strange, old stories, those vanished authors from the time Before. How differently they saw the world then.
“Tell me,” Bar-Hillel says, seemingly at random. “Did any of them ever . . . predict what was to happen?”
Yes, you think. Yes, one. But they’d just been making up stories; they made up a thousand futures and none of those had come to pass. Sometimes the stories served as warnings. Sometimes as entertainment. Thought experiments. That’s all.
Yet in you, at the library, distanced from your surroundings—back then it was harder to pretend to belong, harder to blend in—they awoke something you hadn’t even known you were missing.
A desperate need to ask, What if?
A question which finally led you here, to this building, this room, this city, or one much like it.

[Cathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tirosh goes back to his home in Africa, an alternative Palestine bordering Uganda. Which could have happened. Alternative history, what-might-have-beens, detective novel, hints of an autobiography and choices we make or that are taken from us.

I am really struggling with writing a review. I am not even sure if I liked this or how much. It certainly is ambitious and has lots of potential and plot bunnies that ran off into the great beyond. And the author has won awards and gets many excellent reviews.

It‘s just that this indeed very interesting story does not really go anywhere meaningful for me. Perhaps I just like plot-driven stories too much. Or this just went over my head. I don‘t know. I finished the book two nights ago and still haven‘t made up my mind.

I wish the alternate timelines would have been explored more. All these hints and then we are left dangling. Nur‘s story was a bit of a non-event. Tirosh‘s story took off in an interesting direction, developed little over the middle of the book and was sort of meh at the end. Really disliked Bloom as a person, although he was the most complex character.

I think it‘s going to be 4 stars just to honor the inventiveness and intended scope of the plot.

I received this free e-copy from the publisher/author via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review, thank you!

[Jenia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received an ARC of this book from the publishing company Tachyon Publications in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Unholy Land by Lavie Tidhar is a highly inventive mindfuck of a book, but one I wish had been more fleshed out.

The story is set in an Alternate Universe Jewish homeland called 'Palestina', located in East Africa. (This is based on a real early 20th century plan, "the Uganda Scheme", where a part of British-colonised East Africa would be made into a country for Jewish people.) Lior Tirosh is a SFF pulp-fiction author who had emigrated from Palestina to Europe but is now returning. Things aren't going well back home: tensions are high between the Jews and the Africans, with occasional terrorist attacks and a huge wall to keep out refugees under construction. When Tirosh finds out his niece, who'd been protesting the wall, has gone missing, he too gets caught up in the larger conflict.

This book is a weird, twisty mess that I think will be right up a lot of people's alley. Although, to be honest, the twistiness is making this review hard to write: partway through, the book changes from just Alternate Universe to have more sci-fi elements -- and I think it's funner to just go in blind. Note: the meta elements, e.g. the author's and main character's initials, professions, and very, very broad life stories mirroring each other, is deliberate. The POVs chosen for the book are also fun. There's standard third-person for Tirosh -- and then also a first-person from the secret agent shadowing him (and a second-person later too).

However, putting those elements aside, as with most Alternate Universes, the similarities and differences to our worlds push the reader off-kilter in a delightful way. Palestina's bloody relationship with the original inhabitants is depressingly familiar; the kind German nurse with a neat little swastika patch on her uniform is not. Nevetheless, the world is described convincingly enough that it's easy to slip right in:

Soon they were stuck in traffic, going slow, radios blaring outside: kwasa-kwasa music from the Congo, kwaito from Johannesburg, and Malawi reggae, intermixed with klezmer, orchestral music, and the latest Europop hit. Tirosh took it all in. He was home again, and it felt good.

Thematically speaking, the book obviously primarily explores the question of a Jewish homeland. There's empathy for the European Jews of early 20th century Europe, but there's equally a sharp critique of Israel's brutal policies. I wouldn't say the conclusions the book draws were particularly eye-opening for me, but it's definitely intriguing to see how the issue can be explored through SFF. As I mentioned above, another important question is there in part through the "meta" aspect: to what extent can history change through some decision and to what extent are certain paths inevitable?

However, although I enjoyed the concepts in this book a lot, I felt it needed more space to really hit its potential. There's a lot of things happening in 288 pages; the climax, in particular, did not feel as hard-hitting as it could have been. There's tons of tiny details put in (I ended up googling a lot of Jewish history and mysticism -- basically everything mentioned is "real" in that sense, not made up by Tidhar). But I think it would have been great to see all of it, from the slightly abrupt plot developments to the theme exploration to those tiny allusions get a bit more space to breathe.

Altogether, this is a very concept and theme-oriented work, and the concept is strong enough that I recommend checking it out. I recommend the book especially for:

- Fans of Alternate Universe books
- Can this book be considered New Weird? It gave me some New Weird vibes anyway
- Fans of China Mieville's The City & the City
- People interested in Jewish history and mysticism
- Fans of noir mysteries

 

[Paul Perry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another wonderful literary scifi from Tidhar, who never fails to amaze me. He writes with the literary panache combined with a deep love for and knowledge of science fiction and fantasy as Michael Chabon.


Unholy Land is an exploration of borders - specifically, of the borders of the Jewish homeland - and of how identity with place, and of a people with a place, affects us, and of how history and nation are stories that we tell. It brought to mind Mieville's The City & the City or the TV series Counterpart, moving between versions of reality. There are some lovely moments of recursion featuring the title of the novel, existing in the world, about a writer who may have written a novel called The Unholy Land, that may have been the entire plot in the hands of a lesser writer.


Much like the previous book of his I read, A Man Lies Dreaming (which is also alluded to here), this will stay with me for quite a while.

[Sandra Uv · Rating 4 out of 5]

4,5/5

Hoy os hablo de Tierra Profana, escrito por @lavietidhar y publicado por @duermevelaed

Tenía muchas ganas de descubrir esta novela ya que fue leer en su sinopsis "realidades paralelas" y ya necesitaba dentrísimo. Ese tema es uno de mis favoritos, me FASCINA 😍 creo que incluso me gusta más que el de casas encantadas/fantasmas y eso ya es decir 👀

Creo que casi todo el mundo se ha preguntado en determinadas situaciones el "¿Y si...? ¿Que hubiera pasado si? Cuando tomamos una decisión , dejamos otras atrás y se abren múltiples posibilidades que podrían haber sucedido. Pues esta novela se centra en todas esas realidades, en el marco de una Palestina en territorio Africano, un pueblo judío que no sufrió el Holocausto.

🌹La trama me ha parecido muy original y bastante bien llevada
🌹El autor mezcla una ciencia ficción de realidades alternativas, con una ucronía, una investigación policial y una temática histórica como es el problema del pueblo judío
🌹Aparecen pocos personajes pero estos son bastante potentes, como es el caso de Lior Tirosh, nuestro protagonista
🌹El gran mensaje del libro, tan desolador como realista: el ser humano siempre ha repetido, repite y repetirá los mismos errores en la historia
🌹Gran introducción de Silvia Moreno García, fantástica traducción de Alexander Pàez y maravilloso posfacio (y muy importante) de Nieves Mories

Por otro lado

🥀El único punto negativo para mí, es que el autor cambia muy bruscamente a la hora de narrar de primera persona, a segunda y tercera en cuestión de párrafos y a veces resulta bastante confuso y difícil de leer.

En general he disfrutado muchísimo de esta lectura, que tantas cosas me ha hecho sentir. Es una novela que se puede sentir, tocar, oler...es muy sensorial. Por ahora, de mis mejores lecturas.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CpDphenL_Tc/

[Silvana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ever since I read Exodus by Leon Uris in high school, I have been fascinated by the history of Jewish settlement in Palestine and the prickly nation-building that comes with it. This novel has a premise that suits my interest. In the early 20th century, a group of explorers came to Uganda to examine a site that might become a homeland for the Jews. If only I had known that particular history before I visited Uganda two years ago, I'd have another perspective. Obviously, whatever result the team came up with, it was not enough to convince the site was suitable. Unholy Land tells a story where the exodus to Uganda did happen. An alternate world where World War II occurred but the Holocaust as we know it did not.

It was truly fascinating. But that's not all.There were also different realities and the barriers among worlds, timelines, histories, might be broken. China Mieville's The City and the City and many Doctor Who episodes came to mind. Started with what looked like a detective/missing person investigation in the 'Unholy Land', the novel became much more intricate.

I enjoyed the first 2/3 of the book but lost my grip in the later parts. I did not understand the resolution and the reasoning/motivation of some characters during the hasty big reveal. The issue of a "Wall" and conflicts with the Ugandan natives provided a hazy background. Last but not least, there are many POV jumps from first to second and third person, here to fro, in a very quick succession, it was rather disorienting.

Overall, however, I am still impressed with the execution and the ideas. This is my first Lavie Tidhar novel and since I had come to enjoy his atmospheric writing, this won't be my last.

My thanks to NetGalley and Tachyon Publications for the opportunity to review this book.

[Maryam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review first published at The Curious SFF Reader


Lior Tirosh, a not so famous pulp-fiction writer who’s never published something of note, decides to go back to his homeland to take care of his ill father. Palestina, a small Jewish state established a few decades back near Uganda has changed a lot in the last twenty years he was away.

From the airplane, Tirosh can clearly see the wall being built in order to separate Palestina from Uganda, keeping Palestinians isolated from African refugees. However, when he lands, strange things start to happen, from the border control where an agent keeps on asking if he’s brought anything from the outside, to the odd woman who seems to be following him, to the fact a man he hasn’t seen in twenty years found a way to die in his hotel room. However, before doing so, his former friend has the time to tell him that Tirosh’s niece, a girl he barely remembers from before, has disappeared. And that it has something to do with the construction of the wall and fading borders between realities.

Tirosh decides to “take the case” as would do his main character from his detective stories. He starts traveling in Palestina and in his own past, in the memories he once had of a land who might never had been, navigating the thin border between past, present and what ifs.

What starts off as a novel deeply grounded in our reality, where terrorist attacks happen in faraway countries and are reported by bored journalists days after days, subtly evolves in a mosaique of might have beens and impossible realities all linked together by the protagonist’s journey.

It all begins with an historical anecdote, an expedition that could have prevented the murder of millions of people. What if Palestina was established in Africa and WWII never happened?

However, Unholy Land is not solely about that, it’s also a love letter to the land we consider home. It’s about people belonging to a territory and how this attachment to a piece of Earth is at the center of many conflicts. It follows the consequences of preventing people from reaching a certain land. It can be applied to any wall separating a place from “outsiders”, people who don’t belong for a reason or another, it could be set in Korea, Mexico, Israel or anywhere where walls are buit as borders.

In this world where people can jump form a reality to another, from futures where lands are devastated by wars or still populated by dinosaurs, Unholy Land follows people as they tries their best to belong even in places where everyone see them as foreigners. One of the main character is an agent whose job is to protect his country from outsiders. Those people may be from other realities or just refugees seeking a safer place. He is not likeable character, but, in his mind, he’s doing the right thing. He’s not looking to purposefully hurt people, he just wants to protect what he considers his. He’s, in fact, not even from the land he wants to protect. In a way, he protects it from people like him.

Unholy Land is a love story to your home and how people are mesmerized by it. It’s also about our sense of belonging and loss, how life can be different from what you expected from it. It can be because you never achieved what you wanted, like Tirosh who never managed to touch the world with his novels as much as his father did with weapons, or because you just feel like you weren’t born in the right country, or at the right place at the right moment. It’s rooted in our current reality while being completely set in another.

It is Tirosh’s, or Tidhar’s own journey through memory lane as he’s fleeing from his own past to other worlds while impersonating his own creation. The writing is magnificent as you would expect from Lavie Tidhar. You can smell and taste the different cities, feel the nostalgia and sorrow for a country that never was and relate with characters that are completely at odds with you. It follows three characters, jump from narration styles to narration styles and from timelines to timelines, yet it never feels messy or jaring.

If you enjoyed Central Station, you’ll recognize Tidhar’s beautiful prose and lush imagination. If you never read one of his works and you are looking for an unconventional book, something you haven’t read a hundred times before, give this book a shot. Unholy Land is without a doubt one of the best book I read this year and one I will revisit numerous times in the future.



Highly, highly recommended.



My thanks to Tachyon Publications for the digital advance reader copy. All opinions are, of course, my own.

[Denise · Rating 5 out of 5]

Somewhere between 4.5 and 5 stars. RTC

[Consuelo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reseñita al canto:

https://consuleoluegoexisto.com/2023/...

[Lisa Wolf · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow, what a crazy read! I can't say I've ever come across Israeli science fiction before, and I enjoyed the heck out of this one.

The initial premise is intriguing -- and based on true events. Back in 1904, the Zionist Congress, led by Theodore Herzl, sent an expedition to Uganda to explore land that had been proposed as a site of a future Jewish state. In our (real) world, that didn't work out particularly well, and the idea was shelved in favor of pursuing a homeland in the "holy land", resulting in modern-day Israel. In the world in which we begin Unholy Land, the Africa expedition was a success, resulting in the birth of Palestina, a Jewish homeland located between Uganda and Kenya. Certain of our realities exist in this world as well -- native populations displaced by the creation of the state, resulting in ongoing border crises and refugee camps, a border wall, debate over the Right of Return, and never-ending peace negotiations.

But wait! There's more. Certain people are able to travel between alternate realities, including one like our own, one in which the entire Middle East is at peace and unified after the horror of a limited nuclear event which destroyed Jerusalem, and other, more exotic and frightening worlds. There are Kabbalistic elements involved which mingle with discussion of quantum physics, and it's all packaged up inside a very noir-feeling detective/spy plot.

I was fascinated by the descriptions of life in Palestina -- the language, the culture, the food, the geography. The author does an incredibly inventive and persuasive job of making it seem like a real and viable country, while also demonstrating that in this world or any other, certain problems and challenges and misfortunes seep through no matter what.

The entire plot is somewhat mind-boggling, and I think I'll need to let this one percolate for a bit and then return and read it all over again. It's a quick read, but with plenty to think about. Highly recommended.

[Anna · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars

I originally found this book because it was described as SFF. Let me make sometime clear: While this book contains a few elements of a typical SFF novel, I would not jump to calling it SFF. I can understand why it could be categorized that way, but I also don't feel like SFF themes were predominant in this book. In some ways, that could be really refreshing, but for me, it fell flat.

And that may be where some of my disappointment comes from. I was expecting something with a lot more SFF and a lot less getting kidnapped and interrogated and traveling around Africa. For the first third of this book, it's a straight pulp fiction novel - and that was kind of interesting, though I struggled to stay motivated to keep reading during that part. The story was just so slow and so full of this one man's meanderings and thoughts - I struggled to care about him that much.

And then, the book suddenly gets really trippy - with alternate universes and portals into these other universes - and the trippy part really felt like it came out of nowhere. It disrupted the flow of the book in a really annoying way and, since I had already been having trouble caring too much about the characters and plot, I took a break for several weeks at this point. After a few more chapters, things flow a lot more easily, but the change to fantasy is jarring in a very unenjoyable way.

In addition, the narration is very unclear. You have 3 different voices - 1st person, 2nd person, and 3rd person. And it gets really confusing when you're trying to keep track of who is narrating which part and who is doing what. This probably contributed most to my struggles to keep track of the plot - it was so hard for me to tell who was narrating and what was happening for each character.

All this being said, the premise of the book is very interesting: If a Jewish colony had been set up in Africa before WWII, how would the world be different? Apparently there is some historical precedent to this, as a group of explorers actually went to evaluate an area in Africa to see if it would be fit for a colony and the head explorer submitted a poor review of the area, while most of his assistants were interested and thought highly of the place. A lot of the book takes place in a universe where the head explorer submitted a positive report, many European Jews moved to Africa, and the Holocaust didn't occur as a result. It's a really interesting idea that I think could be expanded upon- but the focus of the book was more on people's ability to transport between universes rather than this possible alternate universe and for me, that made the book far less interesting than it had the potential to be.

Recommended for lovers of portal and alternate universe SFF.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I closed the book--or rather swiped to the last page on my iPad--and my first thought was, I want to read this again. Now.

Because Unholy Land by Lavie Tidhar took me on a crazy ride across genres and space and time and I want to do it all over again.

I read Tidhar's Central Station last year after my son raved about it. So I was expecting Science Fiction. But Unholy Land transcends genre, encompassing alternative history, noir mystery, and time-travel sci-fi, with social and political commentary (not so unusual in sci-fi, of course), so in the end, it transports the reader into an imagined alternative reality AND reflects on contemporary world politics. Add the "wink wink" self-referential nods and existential discussions on the nature of reality, we also get humor and philosophy.

In one work of fiction. And I think I missed some things.

So, yes, I want to read it AGAIN.

Tidhar was inspired by a true story of forgotten history. In 1904, the Zionist movement leader Theodor Herzl was offered land in Uganda as a Jewish homeland. Three men went on an expedition to survey the territory. One became separated and at journey's end, reported fertile land and while the other a saw desert. The idea was abandoned. Tidhar's novel considers the implications of establishing a Jewish homeland predating the Nazi regime.

The main character Lior Tirosh (note the character's name, so like Lavie Tidhar) slips through to an alternative reality. He doesn't realize what has happened, but he is tracked by two people who have been through the portal and lived in other worlds. He becomes embroiled in a battle to control the portal and prevent overlaps in realities.

Tirosh questions, what is history if not an attempt to impose order on a series of meaningless events, just as a detective must piece together a story from conflicting tales.

Don't expect escapist genre fiction, readers, for in Unholy Land we learn in all the worlds possible walls will be built and some will be cast into the outer darkness.

"Lavie Tidhar is a clever bastard, and this book is a box of little miracles." Warren Ellis, Afterword Unholy Land

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

[Gabi · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

Another book that reminds me that I definitely have to read up on Jewish mysticism.
There was so much packed into those pages that I sometimes lost the overview. Yet it is a terrificly weird, fantastical concept that at the same time deals with very real problems.

The three POVs were executed in first, second and third person which worked astonishingly well.
It is definitely a book that has to be read a second time to get all the details.

Out of the SF crime noir novels I've read so far, this one ranks the highest. I liked it even a bit better than Mièville's "The City & The City".

[Tammy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this book for free from the Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.The nitty-gritty: Tidhar's latest is a challenging but ultimately satisfying read that deals with histories, both real and imagined.

Reading a Lavie Tidhar book is like being in a fever dream. Events, characters, places and impressions swirl around you, creating a sense of unease, or confusion, or sadness. Tidhar pieces the parts of his stories together with magical thread, and connections which seem tenuous at first turn out to make sense later on. I’m in awe of his writing abilities, and although this book may be classified as speculative fiction, I can see this sitting comfortably on a shelf alongside more traditional literary works.

In all honesty, this was a tough book for me to get through, and that’s especially hard to admit when many reviewers are lauding Unholy Land as one of the best books of 2018. I was surprised, because I loved Central Station and I was hoping for more of the same. But that’s an easy trap to fall into, believing that all of an author’s books are similar to one another, or that you will love them in the same way you loved that first one you read. Central Station was a collection of stories set in the same world, with characters that crossed over from one story to the next. It wasn’t a traditionally plotted novel at all , but it really worked for me. To my surprise, and dismay, I could not figure out what was going on in Unholy Land for a long time, but I’m very happy that I pushed through, because the last quarter of the story made up for the confusing and scattered beginning.

Tidhar is known for tackling controversial subjects such as politics and religion in his works, and Unholy Land is no different in that respect. This time around, the author takes a historical event that could have happened—in the early years of the twentieth century, a Jewish settlement almost came to fruition in the heart of Africa—and posits what might happen had it actually existed. He takes it one step further, though, and gives us a world where alternate realities exist side by side. In one world, our protagonist Lior Tirosh arrives in Palestina to visit family, but in another world, one that occasionally bursts forth from his memory, Palestina never existed at all, and his life was completely different.

It’s hard to break down the plot for you, because the narrative and setting are constantly shifting, making it hard to piece everything together, but I’ll give you the basics. At its heart, Unholy Land is a mystery. The story opens as Lior Tirosh arrives in Palestina to visit his father, but soon becomes embroiled in several mysteries. His sister-in-law Deborah turns up missing, and a former classmate is found murdered in Tirosh’s hotel room. As he navigates the city of his childhood, surrounded by a wall to keep the rest of Africa out, and rife with suicide bombers, border patrols and unexpected dangers at every turn, the past keeps creeping up on him. But the past he’s remembering has nothing to do with Palestina, this present. He remembers having a wife and a young son named Isaac, but what’s become of them? He keeps seeing the mysterious woman who was on the plane with him, and unbeknownst to Tirosh, an inspector from the airport is following him. How these two fit into the story becomes clear later on, but Tidhar keeps the mystery going for quite a while.

Tidhar has infused his book with autobiographical touches: the main character’s name—Lior Tirosh—is a reflection of his own. Lior is also a novelist who writes detective novels. He’s even penned a book called Osama , which of course is one of Lavie Tidhar’s most well-known books. He’s also writing about his own homeland, as he grew up in both Africa and Israel, and Unholy Land seems to be his vision of fusing the two countries together, in the hopes of creating a better, happier life for thousands of Jews. Reality and fantasy have become intertwined, and it’s quite the heady reading experience when all these connections are made.

One of the more frustrating things about reading this book, however, was the constant change in point of view. I can honestly say I’ve never read a novel where all three POVs—first person, second person and third person—are all used together. Not only that, but the POV changes at a moment’s notice, with no visual breaks to guide the reader. The first time it happened, I had to go back and reread a certain page several times, before I came to the conclusion that perhaps the uncorrected proof I was reading was formatted wrong. But no, it happened again and again, and it finally dawned on me that this was Tidhar’s unique style, which gives the novel a slipstream-like reading quality. This style also made it hard to figure out which character was holding the reins at any particular time, but having finished the book I can understand, or at least I can appreciate, what Tidhar was trying to do.

Unholy Land is one of those stories that requires the reader to let go and trust the author. His stylistic choices didn’t necessarily make sense while I was reading, but at the end I finally saw the “big picture” and was reminded of why I wanted to read this so much. This is a story of ideas and concepts that seem to shift and change along the way, much the way Tirosh keeps falling into different realities. Readers who aren’t afraid of challenging material will surely love this book, although those unfamiliar with Tidhar probably shouldn’t start here.

Big thanks to the publisher for supplying a review copy.This review originally appeared on Books, Bones & Buffy

[Àngels MD (gelsandbooks) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lior Tirosh, un escritor de novelas pulp, viaja de Berlín a su país de origen, Palestina, que se encuentra en África cerca de Uganda, para visitar a su padre enfermo. Una vez allí se ve envuelto en el asesinato de un amigo de la infancia y en la desaparición de su sobrina. Tirosh no es consciente de que hay dos personajes que le están siguiendo, Bloom y Nur, cada uno por sus motivos.

Cuando empecé a leerlo iba con un poco de miedo, por una parte todo el tema de los universos paralelos me atraía pero me daba miedo que fuera una lectura demasiado exigente. Cierto es que es un libro al que le tienes que dedicar atención y leerlo sin prisas, hay que estar un poco atento a los detalles de la narración para poder ir atando cabos. Es un libro extraño, complejo, y que da tantas vueltas y toca tantos temas que, sinceramente, es difícil escribir una reseña.

Una de las cosas que me ha llamado mucho la atención el uso de varios tipos de narradores, que al principio te descoloca un poco pero tiene su sentido. Así como que se trata de un libro de ciencia ficción, una ucronía con viajes a través de diferentes universos a través del misticismo de la Cábala judía. Habla del pueblo judío y de su identidad, pero creo que se puede extrapolar al ser humano. Y a la vez tiene una fuerte crítica y nos habla de la colonización, de los errores del ser humano que se repiten a lo largo de la historia.

La verdad es que me ha sorprendido gratamente y lo he disfrutado muchísimo, saboreando cada una de sus páginas y aunque creo que he captado bastantes cosas, siempre queda esa sensación de que seguro que te has perdido algo por el camino.

He sudado intentando hacer esta reseña, es mejor que leáis el libro y lo entenderéis.

"El mundo es la suma de lo que podría ser, lo que podría haber sido y cómo podría haber sido".

[Eva García Guerrero · Rating 5 out of 5]

En cuanto repose la lectura escribo reseñita, pero qué gran novela.

[Maria Teresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

La reseña completa en https://inthenevernever.blogspot.com/...

«¿Qué era una historia, se preguntó, sino un intento humano de imponer orden al caos, de otorgar un sentido a lo que, en esencia, no era más que una serie de eventos carentes de eso mismo?».

Pocas cosas disfruto más que los libros que juegan con el: ¿qué pasaría si…? Esas historias que nos hablan de lo que podría haber sucedido si algún hecho histórico hubiese cambiado. Pero, si además a esas ucronías las unes con narraciones realidades paralelas que se mezclan, ya tienes toda la atención. Por esa razón hoy quiero recomendarles Tierra profana, de Lavie Tidhar, un libro adictivo y difícil de clasificar que une en sus páginas una ucronía, mundos paralelos y una trama al más puro estilo de las novelas de detectives, mientras nos habla de los problemas del pueblo judío.

[Bandit · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the sort of book that makes you simultaneously go what did I just read and how awesome was that. Speculative fiction at its finest. Tidhar seamlessly blends alternate pasts with fantasy with science fiction and throws in biographical notes for a book unlike any other. It is precisely this one of a kind singular quality of it that really wowed me, despite a dizzying switching around of perspectives. It’s a tricky book, it starts off as a fairly straight forward story of a man, a writer of detective novels, whose name Lior Tirosh isn’t all that dissimilar to the author’s, going to visit his father in Africa. The twist is that in this reality the British Uganda proposition of the early 1900s became a reality and Jews now have a place of their own in a carved out land in Africa, albeit with all the sociopolitical difficulties of the modern Israel, challenges from locals and, of course, the debate around a boundary wall. The other twist is that there are many realities. The story concentrates on three of them with representatives from each offering their own perspectives in first, second and third person and yes, it’ll confuse you. But it’s woven together so cleverly, you can’t help but admire it, like a stunning tapestry where the grand design overwhelms the myriad of threads. Tirosh is a man who has the ability to slip between the alternate realities, so while he becomes a protagonist of his own stories in the main one by trying to be a detective, in other ones things are much more complicated. Palestina, the mythical African land for the Jewish people, might have been a reality, in fact. The survey was undertaken, but different choices were made. To think how such a thing might have played out, how different WWII would have been, is mind boggling. Alternate realities are haunting with all their countless what ifs and what might have beens and Tidhar utilizes that ingeniously in his book. String theories of possibilities are fascinating to fictionally visit. And while, much like time travelling, for me they can be frustratingly confusing (too much against naturally linear brain composition probably), this maze was well worth navigating. A satisfying, intelligent entertaining puzzle of a novel and a most auspicious introduction to a new author. Also technically counts as international reading, the author, originally from Israel, has lived all over. Strikingly original, inventive, imaginative. A very enjoyable read. Thanks Netgalley.

[Jamie · Rating 3 out of 5]

NetGalley ARC provided by the publisher in exchange for my honest opinion.

3.5 of 5 stars. Quick paced and thoroughly entertaining. This is ostensibly an Alternate History story, based on a real proposal from the early 20th century to create a Jewish homeland in Africa. However, it evolves into much more, casting its fantasy roots as a kind of cross parallel universe adventure, with Philip K Dick like reality distorting overtones. And all the while drawing parallels and observations about the modern day Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I also can't help but assume some deep semi-autobiographical overtones between the author and the protagonist, more than just in name (Lavie Tidhar and Lior Tirosh respectively) and profession (novelist).

[Bibliotecario De Arbelon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tierra Profana es una novela que detrás de una trama policial (tenemos un asesinato y una desaparición) esconde una compleja trama que parece una ucronía, pero va más allá y nos sumerge de lleno en realidades alternativas donde la historia, muchas veces, es inevitable.

Es una novela en la que me costó entrar (hasta bien pasada la página 100 no entendía muy bien lo que estaba leyendo), pero que consigue atraparte en sus misterios y poco a poco ves como las piezas del puzzle ideado por Tidhar van encajando a la perfección hasta llegar a un final, ligeramente apresurado para mi gusto, en el que todo encaja y cobra sentido.

Tierra Profana, más allá de su trama policial, también indaga sobre el tema de Palestina, sobre los conflictos sociopolíticos o en la diferencia de clases.

[Cesária · Rating 3 out of 5]

Zacznę od tego, że opis tej książki obiecuje nam solidną zagadkę do rozwiązania okraszoną dreszczykiem emocji związanym z nieustannym pościgiem:

Szukając zaginionej siostrzenicy, Lior Tirosh zaczyna się zachowywać jak detektyw ze swoich powieści. Ścigają go bezlitośni agenci państwowej służby bezpieczeństwa, a jednocześnie odkrywa groźne spiski i niewiarygodne rzeczywistości.

I faktycznie, pojawia się zagadka, pojawiają się agenci, sprawy się komplikują i nawarstwiają, ale wszystko to jakieś takie wydmuszkowe. Niby wiemy za czym goni główny bohater, ale nie rozumiemy dlaczego. Nie wiemy dlaczego ma nam na tym w ogóle zależeć. Podobne wrażenie wydmuszki mam na temat celu pozostałych bohaterów - bo tak, jest ich w tej książce więcej. Wszystko jest przedstawianie na początku w kilku słowach, potem pojawiają się uzupełnienia pełne niedopowiedzeń, więc ostatecznie nie wiem do czego dążą. Co im to da? Na czym im zależy? Co jeśli się nie uda? Kompletnie nie czułam stawki w żadnym wątku. Jedna z postaci pobocznych dostaje dłuższe wprowadzenie, a mimo to nadal nie wydawała mi się ona pełna.

Do tego dzieje się tu mnóstwo, ale jakby nie działo się nic. Wszystkie wydarzenia dzieją się jakby obok, gdzieś w oddali, nawet jeśli dotyczą głównego bohatera. Wrażenie to potęguje fakt, że żadne z tych wydarzeń nie ma konsekwencji, nawet jeśli to było wydarzenie rangi ogólnokrajowej, to przechodzimy nad tym do porządku dziennego i już lecimy z tematem dalej. Zgodnie z opisem Tirosh miał zacząć zachowywać się jak detektyw, a zachowuje się jak dziecko we mgle przemieszczające się od punktu A do B dzięki różnym zbiegom okoliczności. Bezlitośni agenci może i są bezlitośni i w paru miejscach to pokazują, to jednak ten wątek nie sprawia wrażenia takiego, który mógłby poprzestawiać pionki na tej szachownicy.

Jest tu stanowczo za dużo niedopowiedzeń, lub wręcz opisów zawoalowanych tak bardzo, że nie wiadomo już co jest czym. Za dużo nazw wymyślonych po nic. Za dużo pojęć nigdy nie wyjaśnionych i zostawionych domysłom. Ja w książkach zwykle bardzo lubię niedopowiedzenia, bo te dają duże pole do popisu dla wyobraźni. Jednak by ta sztuczka zadziałała, to wyobraźnia musi mieć na czym się oprzeć. Tutaj był to zaledwie szkic i mimo że sam w sobie ciekawy, to jednak niewystarczający.

Fabularnie nie ma tu cudów, jest - ot, poprawnie. Przez brak odczuwalnej stawki śledzi się to po prostu ok i nic poza tym. Rozwiązanie zagadki, a tym samym zakończenie, również nie jest satysfakcjonujące.

To, co zasługuje na pochwałę to komentarz społeczny, którego jest tu sporo i choć jest skupiony głównie na tematyce Palestyny i Żydów, to jednak bez problemu można przełożyć go na inne aspekty.

Są tu też ciekawe zabiegi narracyjne wykorzystujące dla rozróżnienia perspektyw trzy osoby liczby pojedynczej. Tak, jest również narracja drugoosobowa (Daniel, nie czytaj).
Niestety jednak narracja często jest rwana, przeskakujemy od perspektywy do perspektywy, od miejsca w czasie od miejsca w czasie. Powoduje to, że całość jest mocno chaotyczna i niespójna.

Temat alternatywnych rzeczywistości jest ciekawie zarysowany, ale to tyle - nie jest dane nam poznać szczegółów, więc i tak nie wiemy jak one działają i jakie są konsekwencje zacierania się barier, które zapowiada opis książki. Gdyby całość została poprowadzona mniej chaotycznie i bardziej konsekwentnie zasłużyłaby na wyższą ocenę, lecz wady mocno przysłaniają zalety. Moja opinia oscyluje wokół 2.5, więc niech będzie 3, bo jednak podwyższenie do średniaków pasuje mi bardziej, niż obniżenie do 2 do totalnych zawodów.

P.S. Książka ta niewątpliwie była pisana z dużą dozą dystansu, gdyż autor tchnął cząstkę siebie w głównego bohatera - autora pulpowych powieści sci-fi. To jest fajne, do momentu, gdy przestaje być fajne i zaczyna męczyć. Pod koniec miałam już dość kolejnej wzmianki o książce, która znowu słabo się sprzedała i trafiła do koszy z przecenami.

[The Speculative Shelf · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 out of 5 stars

Unholy Land is a stunning achievement. It is packed to the brim with engaging ideas and features a captivating story that I could not stop puzzling over. It will certainly find itself in my Top 10 of 2018 when the year comes to a close.

In the early 20th century, a group of expeditioners traveled to the border of Uganda to inspect a piece of land that was under consideration as a potential site for a Jewish homeland. This site had no holy significance, which made it a difficult sell to “Holy Landers” who considered settling in then-Ottoman Palestine to be a more appropriate choice. Unholy Land explores an alternate history where Jewish settlement in Africa had occurred, as well as the otherworldly borders that came to surround such a place.

I can’t say more about the plot without taking away from what I found to be a marvelous reading experience. There is such an ethereal and intoxicating quality to the story and Tidhar’s writing that I found myself floating through the chapters, not always sure what was happening, or whose perspective we were seeing, but knowing that I wanted to keep reading. The intersecting story threads twisted my brain into a pretzel and I loved it.

Having never read any other work by author Lavie Tidhar, I was blown away by his command of language — every sight, smell, and feeling of a scene is accounted for and communicated in vivid detail. On prose alone, I would have enjoyed this book, but pairing such good writing with such a conceptually intriguing story made for truly enjoyable reading. I look forward to exploring Tidhar’s other works and I hope he continues to write beautiful and thought-provoking speculative fiction.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

See this review and others at The Speculative Shelf.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the early 1900s, the Sixth Zionist Congress authorized an expedition to British East Africa to determine its suitability as a Jewish homeland. The British Government had offered to settle Jews in what is now Kenya, and with the increasing number of pogroms in Czarist Russia, the Zionists wanted to investigate every possibility for a Jewish state. The author of the expedition's report, though, was biased against any option but a return to the Holy Land, and he unsurprisingly found the land unsuitable as a Jewish homeland. Thus in our time the "Uganda Plan" became a historical footnote, a minor thread in the grand tapestry of European politics. But in another timeline...

Lior Tirosh, hack mystery writer and disappointment to his war-hero father, is returning to his homeland---Palestina, the Jewish homeland wedged between Kenya and Uganda. But this is not the idyllic land he remembers from his youth; the government is building an impenetrable border wall to control the flow of African refugees and terrorist suicide bombers. Unrest roils in Ararat City's shadowed streets. The bumbling Tirosh finds himself embroiled in a larger conspiracy, with his niece missing and one of his childhood friends found dead in his hotel room. Fancying himself like a character in one of his novels, Tirosh starts hunting for clues... and finds himself between the transient borders of history, slipping back and forth between alternate realities.

As a history buff, I'm enthralled by this tidbit of history Tidhar's novel has introduced me to. It draws obvious similarities to Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union, but Tidhar's choice is much more Philip K. Dickian, turning a historical oddity into an ingenious flight of fancy, where a multitude of realities are just the shadowed daydreams of one another. The concept of a Jewish homeland set amid a savanna full of giraffes and elephants seems so surreal to me, a homeland that ended up saving most European Jews from the Holocaust. Yet Tidhar takes the idea and uses it to make poignant allusions to modern society: history, he posits, is cyclical, alternate timelines be damned. The lack of a Holocaust changes little: instead of Arab-Israeli Wars, there are African-Israeli Wars and a displaced population of native Kenyans; Palestina's border wall is a direct parallel to the the West Bank Barrier Wall, and suggests the proposed Mexican Border Wall here in the US.

Even then, the Jewish homeland in Africa isn't the strangest part of the novel; Tidhar doesn't just toy with history, he dives through the now-porous borders between space and time. The way Tirosh (and other characters) slip between competing realities and worlds reminds me of Mieville's The City & The City and Hutchinson's Europe in Autumn , two other novels that examine where political borders meet metaphysical ones. In many ways Unholy Land is the natural evolution for the series of pulpy metafictional alternate-history detective novels Tidhar has been writing since Osama. Heck, he even alludes to Tirosh having written that novel, and another one titled Central Station; that's the type of metafictional panache I associate with Tidhar, the subtle (and tongue-in-cheek) implication that Lior Tirosh is the Palestina reality's version of Lavie Tidhar.

Tidhar is certainly not a simple hack like Tirosh; coming hot on the heels of his award-winning Central Station , Unholy Land is no slouch. The writing is just as sharp, but it trades Central Station's more relaxed tone---something of a family drama set in futuristic melting-pot Tel Aviv filled with rusted futurism and the scent of orange groves---for something more befitting an alternate reality noir. The narrative is more puzzle-like, the intricate and tightly-knotted plot centered on Tirosh's investigation before expanding to include a pair of other time travelers and their motivations. (An interesting note, Tirosh's story is told in the normal third person, while the others are in the first-person and second person, making each narrator instantly identifiable.). Central Station and Unholy Land take older SF genre elements and filter them through modern literary sensibilities; both are vividly written, and both are wondrous science fiction visions, but beyond that they are unique masterpieces.

Unholy Land is a gem of modern science fiction. The elements and themes used in its construction are uncommon but not unique, which should be obvious since I just compared it to a half-dozen other novels. And yet it's that rarest of books, the kind of novel that takes those elements and transcends them through the strength of its writing and ambition of its story. I find myself digesting its implications and pondering its many layers weeks after I finished reading it. Lavie Tidhar takes those building blocks and weaves a spellbinding story that's both gripping and quite unlike anything else being published today. I've long been convinced of Tidhar's genius, and Unholy Land just further cements that in my brain. What Tidhar writes today is where science fiction will go tomorrow. Unholy Land is a stunning achievement, a masterful and thought-provoking novel, and I look forward to seeing where Tidhar goes from here.

[Alba Herrera · Rating 2 out of 5]

2'5*

Aunque he estado entretenida y enganchada siguiendo el misterio que envuelve al libro y queriendo saber como se iba a desarrollar la trama, no he terminado de cogerle el gusto al libro.

Quizás porque el ritmo narrativo y, sobre todo, el cambio de voces narrativas me sacaba a veces de la novela, en parte, creo que también ha sido mi falta de bagaje cultural con respecto a los pueblos y costumbres de los que habla a lo largo del libro.