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Winner of the National Jewish Book Award

A Wall Street Journal Best Book of 2014

A New Yorker Favorite Book of 2014

New York Times Book Review Editor´s Choice

These incandescent pages give us one fraught, momentous day in the life of Baruch Kotler, a Soviet Jewish dissident who now finds himself a disgraced Israeli politician. When he refuses to back down from a contrary but principled stand regarding the settlements in the West Bank, his political opponents expose his affair with a mistress decades his junior, and the besieged couple escapes to Yalta, the faded Crimean resort of Kotler´s youth. There, shockingly, Kotler encounters the former friend whose denunciation sent him to the Gulag almost forty years earlier.

In a whirling twenty-four hours, Kotler must face the ultimate reckoning, both with those who have betrayed him and with those whom he has betrayed, including a teenage daughter, a son facing his own moral dilemma in the Israeli army, and the wife who once campaigned to secure his freedom and stood by him through so much.

Stubborn, wry, and self-knowing, Baruch Kotler is one of the great creations of contemporary fiction. An aging man grasping at a final passion, he is drawn inexorably into a crucible that is both personal and biblical in scope.

In prose that is elegant, sly, precise, and devastating in its awareness of the human heart, David Bezmozgis has rendered a story for the ages, an inquest into the nature of fate and consequence, love and forgiveness. The Betrayers is a high-wire act, a powerful tale of morality and sacrifice that will haunt readers long after they turn the final page.

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"When was the last time you tore through a work of literary fiction at the rate of a Tom Clancy thriller? Personally, when I discover I´m holding a smart novel that´s also a page turner, I get punchy. Not only have I spotted a unicorn; we are gamboling down the dale hand in hand. A novel of ideas and an engrossing story?... I consumed David Bezmozgis´s third book...in roughly the amount of time the planet of the apes took to dawn at the Cineplex. (You know something special is happening when you plan to knock off for the day once you hit the next chapter break, and then sail past it.) This is a testament not to the simplicity of the work but to the exceptional skill and effort with which its author has constructed the narrative... In The Betrayers, Bezmozgis´s prose retains the extreme economy that won Natasha so many admirers, while rising to a whole new level of stylistic distinction... Bezmozgis has developed a daunting feel for structure and craft...It achieves a seamlessness that marks it as the most persuasive political novel in years... Even a novel as short as this has to make thousands of decisions; that Bezmozgis made so many smartly feels like a small miracle. The Betrayers can serve as a master class for fledgling writers, and an inspiration for any reader trying to figure out how novels will be saved."--New York Times Book Review

"A lesser writer may have wilted under the expectation that attended this work. But Mr. Bezmozgis´s deft plotting, atmospheric scene-setting and limpid style remain assured. Each page is a gem, its prose carefully weighed and polished."--The Economist

"Mr. Bezmozgis accomplishes the higher task of understanding and humanizing his characters creeds. A reminder that good fiction aspires not to be timely but timeless, The Betrayers illuminates old, stubborn arguments that usually inspire only heat and noise."--The Wall Street Journal

"[A] remarkable, ebullient, tough-minded novel."--The Boston Globe

"The Betrayers...designates Bezmozgis a literary heir to Philip Roth."--Los Angeles Review of Books

"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, author of Little Failure and Super Sad True Love Story

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