A Man Lies Dreaming

An utterly compelling, frightening, lurid, and unique story taking place in an alternate 1939 London, where Adolf Hitler, going by the name Wolf, is working as a Chandleresque private eye after escaping from a Germany where Communists won the 1933 election. Tidhar's book works on so many levels--as a holocaust story (the man who lies dreaming); a violent and twisted detective story; an alternate history where Oswald Mosley's fascists win the 1939 election and Britain takes a turn to the far right (and Tidhar has a wonderful hallucinogenic paragraph where the Shard, the London Eye, and other landmarks of the future are briefly seen but are understood not to exist in the disastrous timeline of Mosley as PM); and maybe even premonitions of show more Brexit. Tidhar's prose is powerful and sometimes poetic. This novel stands with the two ones I have read before--Osama and Unholy Land--as an amazing triumph of an author's imagination, but it is probably easier to digest than those two, and with its links to a history more known to most of us, it manages to not only entertain and disgust, but also to move us and even amuse us a few times. Wolf is not meant to be sympathetic, but even he is capable of a few honest insights along the way to the novel's unpredictable conclusion. Brilliant--just read it. show less

Few authors have hit me as “must-reads” as quickly as Lavie Tidhar..A Man Lies Dreaming delivers another amazing, mind-warping read. Blending classic detective noir with historical fiction, Tidhar crafts an intricate mystery that is also a brilliant Holocaust novel...another triumph for an author unafraid to confront issues that confound and overwhelm most writers. I’m calling it: Lavie Tidhar is one of the modern greats.

Read more at The Redeblog.

The Nazis were ousted by the Communists in the early 1930s, and now Hitler is scratching a living in London, under the name Wolf, as a private eye. There’s something about the conceit that doesn’t really work – whether it’s Hitler downtrodden in London, or just a Chandleresque PI in 1930s London – but Tidhar nonetheless makes it work. Though Wolf is by definition a nasty piece of work, it’s hard not to sympathise with him as he’s beaten and attacked by all and sundry, even those you’d expect to be on his side. While presented as pulp, Wolf’s narrative is really an excellent black comedy – it uses the language of the former, deliberately spoofing Chandler and Hammet in several places, but it is its shape which show more identifies it as black comedy. Even those characters whose sensibilities align with Wolf’s turn on him, and eventually the biggest irony of all lands him on a ship emigrating to Palestine under a Jewish name. The title of the novel, however, refers to the other narrative in the book, about a prisoner at Auschwitz, who used to write shund, or Yiddish pulp fiction. Wolf is his invention. Comparisons with Osama are inevitable as both books posit a real-world villain occupying the role of a pulp fiction hero in an invented universe. On finishing A Man Lies Dreaming, I’d have said the earlier novel was the better, but as I came to write this quick review I decided I preferred this one. A Man Lies Dreaming is an effortless read, and Wolf is an excellent fictional creation. It’s easy to overlook how cleverly done it is. Which is a shame. show less

Wow. Certain novels are so rich that they beggar the imagination. This one dives deep into the hidden recesses of alternate histories and pure Noir pulp in a very satisfying romp. Or is it a transformative detective piece? SF, or a commentary on what it really means to be ... led by crazy ideas?

Let's say it. The big surprise. Wolf, the PI living in London, was actually the failed Socialist Party Leader from Germany who lost the election in '33. That's right. He is Hitler. And Germany is overrun by communists. And England seems to be full of his old cronies who have left him behind to become thugs on their own.

Rich, rich, rich stuff here. And it's a great noir, dealing with pride, being broken, Jewish employers, and lots of references to show more Hitler's book and the publishing industry. Failed book, I might add. :)

I had a great time. None of it was in your face or obvious except for the careful reader, except, perhaps, by the end of the novel, but that's not really the main point.

Oddly enough, I loved one aspect more than all the rest. Hitler's weird transformation into a Jew. It didn't happen right away and had lots of good reasons behind it, like being undercover, but SO MUCH happens that turns our history on its head and pours it all on this poor man... even making him sympathetic in a way... as he lives, learns, and through his embitterment, makes us feel.

I've read nothing like this. It is a class of its own. :) Not a satire. Indeed, rather careful, very mystery-oriented, and often disturbing, but not for the usual reasons. And then, the framing device of the dreaming man, living in a concentration camp... well, that's another added bonus that just makes me think and think. :)

Really enjoyable novel. And btw, it's tied to [b:Unholy Land|39791736|Unholy Land|Lavie Tidhar|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1531831184l/39791736._SY75_.jpg|61518815]. I would recommend reading [b:A Man Lies Dreaming|22793545|A Man Lies Dreaming|Lavie Tidhar|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1406124731l/22793545._SY75_.jpg|42337170] first. show less

An audacious take on the alternate WWII history genre, in which the nazis were defeated in 1933 instead of rising to power, and their leader ends up a disgruntled private detective in London, and the main protagonist for the book. It's written as a period noir detective story, with a simple enough missing person spiraling into murder, gangsters, terrorists, and political conspiracies. Along the way our "hero" suffers various degrading indignities, described in delectable detail, dripping with luscious schadenfreude. It's all a bit over the top, until we find out that the story is actually being composed by a Jewish writer in the Auschwitz concentration camp, to keep himself marginally sane and hopeful while he is being systematically show more stripped of his humanity and worked/starved to death.

For what it is, it's incredibly well done. But I had the same problem as with the The Violent Century, it just isn't fun or entertaining, or particularly enlightening. It's pretty clear (or at least it should be) that "nazis are bad," whether they wear brown shirts, black shirts, tailored suits, or red hats, and we don't need (or at least shouldn't need) to read hundreds of pages of furious anti-Semitic rhetoric, racist slurs, and assorted depravity to catch on. And the people who do need to hear that message aren't going to read this book. show less

Lardy, sweaty spoilers are soon to appear, be warned.

That big fat oaf Gil Chesterton once said that the criminal is the artist, the detective only the critic....he was wrong. I was an artist, for it is an artist's purpose to make order out of chaos.

A clever aside by Tidhar. One as heavy as his other touches. These are the citations of GKC often used by Žižek . That isn't an accident, nothing in this alternative history is random. By a certain metric that would make A Man Lies Dreaming a success. It didn't work for me -- because the protagonist of pulp narrative is HITLER. The National Socialists lose the 1933 elections in Germany and der presumptive Fuhrer flees the Fatherland and the communists for the foggy alleys of East London and show more the rise of Oswald Mosley in 1939. There is a numbing need for the author to populate his set pieces with gotcha figures -- from Ian Fleming to Rudolph Hess to all the Mitford sisters: even Hitler is aghast when Mosley selects Eichmann to lead the German government in exile-- who the fuck is that, quips the failed Austrian painter.

Oh shit, I can't go on. Beckett would've groaned at this contrivance. I simply shudder. show less

I don't really know what to make of this one. It starts as an alt_hist, where the Communists won the elections in Germany in 1933 and rounded up the Nazis into internment camps. a few of them escape to England and become small-time gangsters, thugs, people-traffickers, or end up on the fringes of Moseley's resurgent Blackshirts. All except for Hitler, who works as a private eye under the name of Wolf, because he thinks he's better than all his old, degraded comrades and is standing up for justice. There is a lot of violence, anti-semitism, misogyny, and sado-masochistic sex. It's totally sordid.
Then there are other passages apparently from out timeline where a Jewish man is trying to survive in Auschwitz. He used to write pulp fiction show more so presumably he's the man "dreaming" the alternate timeline, but it's hard to be sure.
It's an unpleasant story, but I felt compelled to read to the end to find out what happened, so I guess it worked. show less