David Bezmozgis - The Betrayers

David, King of Israel, lives, lives and endures!

The author wishes to thank the following people and organizations for their assistance:

Ben George at Little, Brown USA; Will Hammond at Viking/Penguin UK; Iris Tupholme at HarperCollins Canada.

Amanda Urban at ICM in New York; Margaret Halton at RCW in London; Daisy Meyrick at Curtis Brown UK. Thanks also to Ira Silverberg, who oversaw the book in its early stages.

Roman Chavdarov, for his exceptional generosity and hospitality in Crimea. My traveling companions, Michael Burns and Simon Shuster. Elana Kriulko and everyone I met at the Feodosia Hesed. Victoria Plotkina and everyone at the Simferopol Hesed — particularly Natalia Visotskaya, who has been a tremendous source of information about Crimean Jewry past and present .

Benny and Varda Shilo, for hosting me at the Weizmann Institute. Also at the Weizmann Institute: Amos and Galia Arieli, Shimon Levit, Rada Massarwa, and Tegest Aychek. At kibbutz Ein HaHoresh: Gadi, Ayala, and Itamar Marle; Yonat and Yossi Rotbein; and Elisha Porat. To the former refuseniks with whom I met in Israel: Yuli Kosharovsky, Hillel Butman, Evgeny Yakir, Alexander and Polina Paritzky. And, once again, to Enid Wurtman, for opening doors and much else. I’m also grateful to Benny Begin, Hilik Bar, Yoram Meital, Talia Sasson, Boaz Katz, Meyer Shimony Bensimon, and Shlomo Azoulai for their time, as well as to Samer Makhlouf in Ramallah. Further thanks to Joel Braunold and OneVoice.

Many people at the American Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) were helpful to me at various stages of researching and writing the novel, among them Misha Mitsel, Gilla Brill, Mark Codron, Asher Ostrin, Ofer Glanz, and Michael Geller, who offered unflagging support.

Nell Freudenberger, Amity Gaige, and Larissa MacFarquhar read early drafts of the novel. Rabbi Martin Berman and Marilyn Berman also offered valuable advice.

Significant sections of the book were researched and written during fellowships at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library and at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. I am sincerely grateful to both organizations and to the colleagues I met there whose insights informed the novel, particularly those of Mortaza Mardiha.

And, as ever, I’m grateful to Hannah Young and Sara Bezmozgis.

DAVID BEZMOZGISis an award-winning writer and filmmaker whose fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Zoetrope, and The Best American Short Stories. He is the author of the story collection Natasha and the novel The Free World, and in 2010 he was named one of The New Yorker’s “20 Under 40” writers.

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“Now that Philip Roth has finished his life’s work, let us turn our attention to David Bezmozgis. His bravery and style are off the charts, and The Betrayers is his finest, slyest, most robust work yet.” —Gary Shteyngart

“A novel of compulsive dramatic power, The Betrayers feels as urgent as the news and as eternal as scripture. David Bezmozgis weds precise, perfect craft with a generous moral vision of the heart, and head, in ceaseless conflict.” —Charles Foran

“An intensely penetrating, transcendent novel … with characters that are absolutely themselves, their flaws, strengths, and desires so tenderly and truthfully imagined as they move through the startling turns of a story that rises out of the deep center of Bezmozgis’s fine intelligence. Extraordinary.” —Barbara Gowdy

“ The Betrayers is a moral thriller in the tradition of Bernard Malamud, but the generosity, grace, and wisdom of the writing belong entirely to David Bezmozgis. The magic of fiction is that it makes the reader care deeply about imaginary strangers, and Bezmozgis is a magician.” —Aleksandar Hemon

“In this taut, fierce, forensically insightful novel, David Bezmozgis explores the frictions between goodness and kindness, public and private virtue, forgiveness and forgetting. Compulsive and profound.” —A. D. Miller

“This unforgettable novel squanders no words in its brilliant, deft depictions of love, of memory, of compassion — and, ultimately, despite its title, of loyalty.” —Edith Pearlman

“ The Betrayers presents us with the novel-as-scalpel, a brilliant dissection of lives formed and deformed by tyranny, temptation, and the demands of conscience. Just when we think we’ve arrived at the heart of the story’s moral complexity, Bezmozgis cuts again and lays bare yet another layer. It’s harrowing, but also thrilling, to see our nature revealed with such unflinching precision. This outstanding novel not only shows Bezmozgis at the top of his form, but also definitively establishes him as one of the foremost writers of his generation.” —Ben Fountain