One of the most serious and original reviews ever to be written about “Good People” in the great literary magazine ‘Letras Libris’: “Good people is not a novel about the Second World War… The challenge that Baram takes on himself is to break the reader identification system that often goes looking for a character to identify with and to believe in. There is no doubt that Good People comes out victorious”

“Celebrated as the future king of Israeli literature, praised and translated into several languages and considered the new voice of the left, Nir Baram reaches Spain.”

After participating in Hay Festival in Cartagena, Columbia in the beginning of 2014, Nir Baram will be participating in Bogota book-fair in May 2014.

So Far the rights to “World Shadow” were sold to the following publishing houses:
Text publishing (English rights). Hanser (Germany). Alfaguara (Spain). De Bezige Bij (Netherlands and Belgium). Gyldendal (Denmark). Fraktura (Croatia). Gyldendal (Norway).

An interview in English about “World Shadow” in the culture program of I24 news.

Starting at 6.45 minute

Pre publication review in France – Livres Hebdo:
“So it is finally here, the great novel that earned its author great success in Israel, comparable to the novel “The Kindly Ones” here in France… ‘Good People’ is a masterful metaphysical novel written by a true artist.”

“World Shadow is a novel that will fire-up people everywhere it’ll be published, especially young people.
Only rarely can you read such a novel that is sophisticated, full of energy, imagination, innovation, rage and humor. More than anything: World Shadow changes the way you see the world. It is very possible that in a few years World Shadow will become a novel that young people  all over the world qoute.”

(author A.B Yehoshua)

The famous international Mexican Author Jorge Volpi writes an excellent review about “Good People” in the Mexican daily Reforma:

“Like all great historical novel, the greatest merit of Good people lies in its ability to speak on the present time, rather than the past. Because those good people who tolerate the Nazi butchers are similar to those who chose not to hear the news that warned about the genocides in Cambodia and the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda or Darfur…”

A different Israeli literature is possible

A young literary consciousness of Israel
Nir Baram faces Jewish clichés with the first novel is a Hebrew WWII without focusing on the Holocaust

There is something intensely challenging in Nir Baram ..in his work and his personality. In rebellion, he has done something that only an Israeli without fear can do. He has offered his country a novel portraying the pre-World War II horrors so disturbing: without portraying monsters or tell their bloody crimes, leaving barely seen the death of millions. Good people in Baram’s novel subject the course of history by two special human beings, full of talent and sensitivity. They tempt the reader with their fascinating personalities, and tragically end up choosing to be collaborators of the great evils of the twentieth century by a cruel and soulless opportunism. Their decisions have devastating effects and engulf themselves and the dignity of an entire generation.

To the full on-line interview:
http://cultura.elpais.com/cultura/2013/12/03/actualidad/1386101395_866224.html

Dror Mishani the author of the international best seller, award winning “The Missing File” in an evening about “World Shadow”.

World Shadow is a marvelous and revolutionary novel that in its greatest moments refuses to accept the world as it is and as we “already” know it – but rather starts to read as a text on the verge of what the world is ‘no longer’ but ‘could be’ and ‘might some day be’.

This dimension which is beyond “knowing the world” opens up in the novel mainly due to the process of repentance that its two main characters go through.

Gabriel Mantsur from Jerusalem changes during the novel, so much so that in the end of the novel he is no longer the same man; he drifts away from the business world and the financial world due to his decline in them but also because he undergoes a deep transformation, so deep that in the end he supports the strike.

Like Gabriel, Daniel Kay also undergoes an ideological transformation which brings him not only to betray his ex-co workers at MSV but to even join the strikers.

Through Daniel Kay, Gabriel Mantzur and the group of young strikers – the world as we know it is on the verge of repentance and comes closer to a real change. The truly fascinating things is that this also happened in Baram’s novel Good People – so much so that even in that historical novel Baram created the feeling that if the two main characters dare just a bit more they’ll be able to minimize the disastrous effects of the war that already happened.

In World Shadow this feeling is even stronger because while reading this seemingly realistic novel, a novel that knows the world better than any other Israeli novel, you feel that turning the page will make the world different.

In its liberating moments World Shadow is not written in the present tense of “knowing the world”, also not in future tense (utopian time), but rather in a unique tense that lays between a familiar present and a yet unknown future. A tense or a time that could be named “the time which is forming now” (a line from World Shadow, page 402). And this tense continuously asks the readers: which time do you want it to be?

To the full lecture –

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_olsPleHG0

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3 months after publication – World Shadow by Nir Baram hits No. 1 on the Best-Seller lists. This goes to show the immense effect and the enthusiastic reactions this novel has in Israel.

(Ha’aretz, 13.11.2013)

06/10/2013 – The Israeli Left’s last novel by Noam Sheizaf – A new best-selling novel by Nir Baram takes aim at the Israeli ‘peace industry,’ globalization and the sense of betrayal a generation of left wing and progressive operatives is leaving behind.

“A real literary achievement. Surely one of the most impressive novels that were written in Hebrew in the past years. It is a mind-blowing epos that raises big questions about the human spirit, democracy, morals and violence.” 15/08/2013

(Ha’aretz Culture Supplement)

To read the whloe interview in English, please click ‘read more’

“Good People” is in the bestseller list in the Netherland.

Best Seller. List of best novels of 2012: NRC, Trouw, De Tigd, Athenaeum.

06/05/2010 – Israelis and Palestinians Hail Writers and the Word, Just Not With One Another.

“The question that hovered at both festivals was how the reading of good books could make a difference. Nir Baram, a young Israeli writer who addressed the opening of the Israeli festival, offered an answer…”

“The book of the year”

(TimeOut Tel-Aviv selection)

Another 5 stars review for “Good People” from the Belgium “De Standaard”

An interview  with Nir Baram – Der Tagesspiegel

“Israel is the bubble, Tel Aviv is authentic.”

Süddeutsche Zeitung

A conversation Between Nir Baram and the author A. B. Yehoshua.