An outstanding review about “World shadow” in El Pais, the most important newspaper in the Spanish world: “Tremendous description of the evils passions, and hopes that shape the world today. One of the most ambitious novels I have ever read. A lucid and torrential story of revolution, politics and defeat…You can hear in world shadow echoes of the underworld by Don Delillo, Echoes of rebellion, commitment, literature.”

«Tremenda descripción de los males, pulsiones y esperanzas que recorren el mundo actual. De lo más ambicioso que he leído. Un relato lúcido y torrencial de la revolución, la política y la derrota.»

A different Israeli literature is possible

A young literary consciousness of Israel
Nir Baram faces Jewish clichés with the first novel in Hebrew about WW2 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 article:

The NRC, Nederland leading newspaper, published its selection for the best 50 novels of the last 5 years: Barams novel was chosen with books by Bolano, Franzen, Murakami, John Williams and others

“The critical praise which have been showered on this book is like a writer’s wildest dream. A German newspaper said, “Dostoyevsky would write like this if he lived in Israel today.” Except that feelings of guilt are, as explained, less of an issue than careerism, it isn’t too much of an exaggeration. In its specifically Stalinist setting, Solzhenitsyn also comes to mind.”

Five stars and great review about “Good People” in one of Denmark most important newspapers: Berlingske…

“What would we have done if we did live in that part of the world? It is inevitably a recurring question while reading Nir Barams masterful novel ‘Good people’. In his beautiful novel of two main characters and a host of other tragic secondary characters – give the Israeli writer Nir Baram a vivid depiction of life under Nazism and Communism in 1930s. The novel is a freezing depiction of moral decay…”

Outstanding review about “Good People” in one of Argentina most important newspapers “La Nación” by the acclaimed write José María Brindisi

“Sobre estos dos ejes argumentales, que son en verdad dos readaptaciones siniestras, avanza la novela del escritor israelí Nir Baram que, al momento de su publicación -en 2010-, tenía apenas treinta y cinco años. El dato es significativo, o más bien sorprendente, no sólo por la penetración psicológica que el autor obtiene respecto de sus personajes, construida a partir de innumerables pliegues y vaivenes, y alejada por tanto de cualquier sombra arquetípica, sino también por el conocimiento minucioso -y la naturalidad con que se despliega- de las estructuras de ambos Estados, de sus aparatos jerárquicos y entramados burocráticos. Con todo, lo que más llama la atención es el tono -incluso por la extensión, por el hecho de sostenerlo durante más de quinientas páginas- con que se cuenta la historia, siempre cargado de un fino tamiz humorístico, que nunca llega a distanciarse de lo real y así lo revela en sus aristas más feroces..”

World Shadow is in the list for the Sapir Prize 2014. The Sapir Prize for Literature of Israel is the most important annual literary award presented for a work of fine literature. This is Nir Barams third nomination for his last three novels. His last two was also shortlisted.

The Mexican Writer JORGE F. HERNÁNDEZ wrote an article In El Pais about his meeting with Nir Baram in Mexico:
“I met Nir Baram during the last International Fair of Guadalajara and had the pleasure to make him not only an instant friend with his lucid and full of intelligent humor and conversation skills – but also to express my admiration for his great prose. Baram came to Mexico to present Good people (Abundant, 2013), a voluminous novel that reads like pure water. His fine prose has been written with true heart and soul and as you read it you hear not only the voice the writer, but also each of his memorable characters.”

Hanoch Marmari the former editor of Haaretz in an article about World Shadow in’The Seventh Eye Journal’ : “A literary miracle, a novel that builds a glorious floor above the capitalist mall inside which we all lost our way. Amongst other subjects Nir Baram’s novel World Shadow deals with a group of anarchists that manage to corrupt, through a series of sloppy events, art works in museums and to capture for one moment the attention of millions.”

to read the whole review in the The Seventh Eye Journal click read more

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.”

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…”

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)

“I do not know when an author justifies this title that barely survives our days. Baram’s mission is to find that hidden, elusive and rare matter of freedom; that of the inner freedom, which exists in humans and is the first thing they hurry to put to death.”

“World Shadow is an accurate, shimmering and unique literary Achievement, a  representation which while screening through the political net of enslavement, displays the relations between the human being and the enslaver in the depressing period of global capitalism.”

to read the whole review click read more