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A Man Lies Dreaming

Lavie Tidhar

3.84 · Rating details · 908 ratings · 184 reviews

Deep in the heart of history's most infamous concentration camp, a man lies dreaming. His name is Shomer, and before the war he was a pulp fiction author. Now, to escape the brutal reality of life in Auschwitz, Shomer spends his nights imagining another world - a world where a disgraced former dictator now known only as Wolf ekes out a miserable existence as a low-rent PI ...more

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Paperback, 278 pages

Published December 2014 by Hodder & Stoughton (first published October 23rd 2014)

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Sep 30, 2016 Dan Schwent rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2016-books, 2016

In the Auschwitz concentration camp, a former pulp writer named Shomer imagines a world where the Nazis never came to power and a certain dictator is a down and out private investigator named Wolf. Wolf is hired to find a woman named Judith Rubinstein, who may have been smuggled out of communist Germany. Can Wolf find Judith and figure out who is pulling the strings of his former allies?

I stumbled upon this book during my brief alternate history binge during what 2.0 called my Summer of Love. S In the Auschwitz concentration camp, a former pulp writer named Shomer imagines a world where the Nazis never came to power and a certain dictator is a down and out private investigator named Wolf. Wolf is hired to find a woman named Judith Rubinstein, who may have been smuggled out of communist Germany. Can Wolf find Judith and figure out who is pulling the strings of his former allies?

I stumbled upon this book during my brief alternate history binge during what 2.0 called my Summer of Love. Since I dug The Bookman and HebrewPunk, I gave it a shot.

Grown from the same literary roots as The Man in the High Castle, A Man Lies Dreaming is a tale of what might have been, if the communists had risen to power in Germany in the 1930s instead of the Nazis.

Using Shomer as a framing device, Lavie Tidhar shows who Hitler might have become without power, a fearful, hateful, pathetic man with little direction. Parts of the tale are darkly funny, which makes sense since Shomer is dreaming the tale to forget about the horrors of Auschwitz.

I'm not sure why Wolf being a loser private detective in London works so well but it does. Wolf takes a more blows to the head than Lew Archer as he tries to track down Judith Rubinstein, making a lot of enemies in the process. Wolf is a slightly sympathetic lead until you remember how things went in real life. It's pretty satisfying to read the ass-kickings he takes and to see his impotent rage. Not to mention the kinky sex...

The books ends a little differently than I thought it would but it was still satisfying. Tidhar's copius research is apparent in the afterword, which I normally don't read. Thankfully, he doesn't suffer from the "work all research into the book" syndrome a lot of authors suffer from.

Lavie Tidhar has come a long way in the short time I've been aware of his work. A Man Lies Dreaming is both a great alternate history detective tale and a commentary on racism and the way we treat immigrants, something that sadly never goes out of style. Four out of five stars.

...more

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Jan 18, 2019 Paul Sánchez Keighley rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: pomo-lite, c-united-kingdom, alternate-history, whodunit, holocaust, noir, best-of-2019

I can’t believe I’m giving this book 5 stars, but I’m too much in awe of what Tidhar has pulled off here.

This is an alternate history roman noir starring Hitler (yes, Hitler) as a down-at-heel private investigator. In this universe, the Nazis lost the 1933 elections, and Hitler emigrated to London, where he earns a meagre living as a sleuth. But wait, there's more: all of this is the story a Yiddish pulp fiction writer is composing in his head as a means to escape the brutal reality of day-to-da I can’t believe I’m giving this book 5 stars, but I’m too much in awe of what Tidhar has pulled off here.

This is an alternate history roman noir starring Hitler (yes, Hitler) as a down-at-heel private investigator. In this universe, the Nazis lost the 1933 elections, and Hitler emigrated to London, where he earns a meagre living as a sleuth. But wait, there's more: all of this is the story a Yiddish pulp fiction writer is composing in his head as a means to escape the brutal reality of day-to-day life in Auschwitz.

That's the book. As befuddling as the premise sounds, Tidhar doesn’t take his subject matter lightly, and pulls heavily from a wealth of historical facts and sources to build his protagonist’s psyche and the circumstances surrounding him. I started the book chuckling bemusedly to myself, but after a few chapters, lo and behold, this daft conceit started to sound convincing.

Tidhar offers us a fascinating thought experiment in this novel, forcing us to contemplate what would have been of Hitler had he been ousted before he had time to implement his monstrous policies. What we’re left with is an angry little man, an angst-ridden racist at odds with the world, but - and this is key - someone who is ultimately human and frail, frustrated and insecure, the mirror opposite of the larger-than-life idea of Hitler we now have no trouble thinking of as the personification of evil itself.

Behind every great historical figure lies a man who may have gone through life being a nobody had fate dealt him a different hand. The idea is provocative, perhaps even in bad taste, but I admire Tidhar’s balls for jumping straight to Godwin’s law and putting none other than Hitler on the dissection table to make his point.

While there’s something undeniably therapeutic about seeing Hitler pushed around, ignored, teased, used and abused, there’s also a sinister underside to all this, which is that he ends up becoming relatable, and - shock and horror - you even find yourself rooting for him. The fact that the ‘bad guys’ of the story are a bunch of depraved evil Jews just makes the situation even more morally confusing.

The violence Hitler suffers in this novel doesn’t have the cathartic nature of other Nazixplotation works (vide Inglorious Basterds), it’s there to drive home the twisted point Tidhar’s trying to make. This isn’t Hitler-as-we-know-him being brutally attacked; this is a potential Hitler-as-we-know-him, who still hasn’t committed any atrocity other than having morally reprehensible racist and imperialist ideas (I mean, come on, we’ve all had that one guy in high-school, right?). It's basically the old 'Is it morally acceptable to punch a Nazi?' debacle but weaved into the subtext of a detective story.

Another interesting question Tidhar poses is whether it would have been enough to oust Hitler from power to avoid WWII and the Holocaust, or whether Hitler's popularity would have been enough to start a chain reaction leading to the same end one way or another? The reasoning behind this being that the moment someone with vile populist ideas is given a public platform, he then spawns imitators who'll ape his same rhetoric to get elected in other countries (something worth thinking about in our day and age).

This book is not for everyone. If you are appalled by the fact that I’m even entertaining these hypotheticals, then don’t go anywhere near it. It takes your mind to dark strange places indeed. Then there’s the very graphic violence and BDSM sex. I thought it was appropriate, as this book is also a heartfelt homage to pulp fiction, and these scenes certainly help bring that feeling of reading lurid rubbish to life. Anyway, you know your limits. If you think you can handle it, give detective Hitler a chance. ...more

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Jul 28, 2019 Bradley rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2019-shelf, sci-fi, mystery

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 ...more

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Apr 26, 2015 Caroline Mersey rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

A Man Lies Dreaming is a darkly comic alternate history set in the late 1930s, where Hitler never became Chancellor of Germany and was toppled in a coup. Instead, he fled to London where he now works as a down at heel private investigator. As the novel opens, he's been hired by a rich Jewish heiress to track down her missing sister. But this alternative history exists only in the imagination of a pulp crime writer imprisoned in Auschwitz.

As Lavie Tidhar's extensive historical notes to the novel A Man Lies Dreaming is a darkly comic alternate history set in the late 1930s, where Hitler never became Chancellor of Germany and was toppled in a coup. Instead, he fled to London where he now works as a down at heel private investigator. As the novel opens, he's been hired by a rich Jewish heiress to track down her missing sister. But this alternative history exists only in the imagination of a pulp crime writer imprisoned in Auschwitz.

As Lavie Tidhar's extensive historical notes to the novel make clear, there is a long tradition of pulp fiction being used by Jewish writers to explore and address issues relating to the Holocaust. Sometimes the approach taken can be shocking, featuring sexual exploitation of Jewish people, but it has a long history in enabling a culture to come to terms with its past. Popular culture is as much a part of that as 'high' culture, and this is explicitly referred to within the novel, in the form of a debate between two Jewish writers, one based on Primo Levi, the other on a pre-eminent writer of pulp fiction.

By fictionalising and transposing real historical characters (as he did in Osama, his novel which includes a series of books about a fictional freedom fighter called Osama bin Laden), Tidhar is able to examine them in isolation from their context. With the trappings of power removed, Hitler becomes a comic figure: all impotent rage and frustrated ambition. A Hitler who is at the mercy of the system rather than in charge of it becomes a figure to be pitied. His hatreds are petty and over the course of the novel his grip on sanity and rationality begins to slowly unravel. The extensive footnotes show that this portrayal has been extensively researched and grounded in contemporary accounts of Hitler's life and formative experiences, lending the book a high level of authenticity. Other senior Nazi figures also feature, often at the fringes of the law: Hess runs a nightclub, Klaus Barbie is involved in people trafficking and Eichmann becomes the puppet of a US Government seeking to overthrow the Communist regimes that have taken over Europe.

It would be tempting to think of A Man Lies Dreaming as Tidhar's Holocaust novel, but it is so much more than that. It has much to say about contemporary society, particularly in how we treat immigrants and minorities. In Tidhar's alternative London, Oswald Mosley is on the verge of becoming Prime Minister. His Blackshirts are a personal paramilitary force, engaged in violent assaults on members of the Jewish community to which the authorities turn a blind eye. .Deliciously, much of Mosley's major political speech in the novel is drawn from genuine UKIP speeches (as Tidhar revealed when I met him at SRFC at the end of April), showing just how little has changed in our attitudes to those who don't conform to a narrow idea of Britishness.

Tidhar pulls off a very tricky balance in this novel. The Auschwitz sequences are written in such a way as to highlight the brutal treatment of the Jewish community. But if we didn't know it was a historical reality, one would be hard-pressed to find it credible that human beings could treat one another in such a way, rendering those sections of the novel more dreamlike and less convincingly real than the alternative London of right-wing bigotry and impoverished refugees.

A Man Lies Dreaming is a difficult and dense novel to read. Some may struggle in particular with the BDSM sex scenes featuring Hitler, however darkly funny they are written (brain bleach is definitely required). But it is a rich and complex work that rewards thoughtful reading and stays with you long after finishing it. It is probably my book of the year so far. ...more

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May 20, 2017 Brad rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: about-imagination, about-violence, about-sexuality, detective, about-life, exceeded-my-expectations, read-in-2017, serial-killer, wwii-era-lit, about-hate

***WARNING: I feel the need to swear in this review, so if you are not up for a few expletives, please move on. Nothing to see here. If you don't mind the sweariness, though ... "Willkommen!" ***

Me: So A Man Lies Dreaming is a giant fucking jackboot to the genitals.
You: What the hell do you mean by that?
Me: Besides the quite literal kicks to the balls and vulvas?
You: What?
Me: Seriously. This book is a cornucopia of genital punishment. Knives, boots, hands, knees, other genitals! If you can im ...more

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Aug 13, 2016 Jonfaith rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: speculativelyspeaking

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. ...more

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Dec 15, 2016 Daniel Polansky added it · review of another edition

Look, I didn’t want to read anything else by Lavie Tidhar, OK? I felt like I’d sort of done my duty as a very casual friend of by reading A Violent Century a month or two back, but he just kept on and on and fucking on. Read my book about Hitler, he said. I already read it, Lavie. No, he said, a different book about Hitler. And then he called me a bunch of unrepeatable names and then he sent me a review copy of A Man Lies Dreaming.
A Man Lies Dreaming is the story of a writer of Yiddish pulp fic Look, I didn’t want to read anything else by Lavie Tidhar, OK? I felt like I’d sort of done my duty as a very casual friend of by reading A Violent Century a month or two back, but he just kept on and on and fucking on. Read my book about Hitler, he said. I already read it, Lavie. No, he said, a different book about Hitler. And then he called me a bunch of unrepeatable names and then he sent me a review copy of A Man Lies Dreaming.
A Man Lies Dreaming is the story of a writer of Yiddish pulp fiction, who, while dying in Auschwitz, envisions a vengeful alternative reality in which the Fuhrer is forced to make ends meet as an exile in London. A low rent private detective, Wulf, as Hitler is called, is forced into tracking down a Jewish woman who, it is suspected, has been kidnapped by the rest of his Nazi cabinet, who have set themselves up as basically a criminal underworld in this alternate world version of England. Part of the joke is that Hitler, as written by Tidhar, maintains the essential features of the classic noir hero—he is incorruptible (if utterly evil), as resistant to the temptations of money and society as was the Marlowe himself. Part of the joke is that our eponymous dreamer is using this fantasy to torture this version of Hitler according to the vulgar traditions of his sub-genre – Hitler is beaten, drugged, tortured, raped several times, urinated upon, and forcibly circumcised, broken down by the cruelties of society until he comes to resemble the broken creatures he created in such numbers.
My first instinct upon reading this book was to wonder, quite simply, how in the name of God Lavie got it published. It as resolutely uncommercial a novel as I have ever read. Far too peculiar for the vast majority of genre readers it is also pulpy and deliberately vulgar in a fashion which seems calculated to likewise annoy more literary types. I also can't possibly imagine the Goy getting anything out of it – it is so distinctly a product of a certain very distinctly Jewish sense of humor, at once lyrical, ironic, and puerile. Readers who persevere through its peculiarities will discover a book which, astonishingly in this day and age, manages to grapple with the moral ramifications of the Holocaust in an original way. It also has a really, really good Eichman joke.
It is an imperfect novel – the footnotes which accompanied my addition are unnecessary, adding a meta layer to an already complex book. They seem to exist only to offer a sort of intellectual cover for the book, to disassociate the author from the material. There are also, anyway you slice it, too many scenes of Hitler erotica. But in a book so idiosyncratic, such excesses must be forgiven. I don’t really know who reads these reviews, and thus I can’t, in good conscience, actually recommend this book to you. The vast majority of people will probably not enjoy it in the slightest. But it doesn't take away from it being a work of authentic merit.
Congratulations, Lavie – you’ve written the last word in alternative reality Nazi fiction. Could we maybe move on to something else now? ...more

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Sep 28, 2019 DeAnna Knippling rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Adolf Hitler and the Nazis never come to power. Instead they fall, and flee to England, where "Wolf" now works as a noir private detective in an alternate universe.

This is one of the most personally satisfying books it has been my pleasure to read. Petty and noble, well-read and well-reasearched, gorgeously written, and divinely ironic. There is no utopia here, only filth and sin and hate, a hate that drives itself to a moment of justice I can't even be jealous of the author for having written.

T ...more

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Apr 13, 2015 Silvia Moreno-Garcia rated it it was amazing

Novel about an alternate 1930s Germany where Hitler is a private detective. But there's another reality where a Jewish man in a concentration camp uses his imagination to escapes the horrors of World War II. Tidhar displays a great knowledge of history, pulp fiction, genre fiction and language. It's a raw, difficult and brilliant work ...more

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Jul 27, 2020 Stephen rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This novel is based in 2 parts , the first part is when Shomer is awake and he is in Auschwitz, but while he is dreaming he dreams of an alternative world where Hitler is known as Mr wolf and is a PI in London. I do like the alternative history part of this novel and is like a pulp fiction novel

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Jan 30, 2015 Benjanun rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This is alternate history, imagining Adolf Hitler as an impoverished private investigator - stripped of his power, forced to live on little money in London.

The framing narrative is thus: a Jewish man, dying in a concentration camp, comforts himself by imagining Hitler as the above. We have two layers running side by side: the inhuman brutality of the camp and alternative Hitler (alias Wolf) investigating a missing person case in London. It's a risky, ambitious idea of course - not many writers c ...more

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Sep 09, 2014 Martin rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: literature, science-fiction, london, mystery, alternative-history, great-britain

I have no doubt that this will be one of the top books I read in 2014. A man lies dreaming is like no other book I have ever read. That is not a casual statement. It certainly shares traits with, among others, Lavie Tidhar's previous work, as well as Philip K Dick, and dare I say George MacDonald Fraser among a host of others. AMLD is a gutsy book. It shows an author who is willing to take chances, and enjoys more than a healthy dose of irony among other traits. I wish I could come up with some ...more

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Jan 06, 2017 Karl marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Shelves: 2017-01-books-bought

COVER ART: Pedro Marques
PAGES A Man Lies Dreaming - 348 / Lust of the Swastika - 88

"A MAN LIES DREAMING" including the previously unpublished novella LUST OF THE SWASTIKA plus bonus material.

Limited to 200 numbered Slipcased Jacketed Hardcovers signed by Lavie Tidhar ...more

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Aug 13, 2016 Ben rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2016

Really more like a 4.5, though I have more reservations than that score would typically indicate.

Plenty has been said about the plot, so I won't bother recounting it. Yep, Hitler. Yep, kinda funny! Yep, very uncomfortable at times. But what I didn't expect was how uncomfortable it made me to see Hitler abused, the way he's abused in this book. Of course, that sort of vengeful, smirking abuse is in part justified by the frame story, which implies that this Hitler and his many indignities are drea ...more

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Oct 21, 2014 Tudor Ciocarlie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: hugo-2015, 2014-my-best-of

The most disturbing story I've read all year. The Holocaust needs new perspectives in order for its pain and its warning to remain fresh in people's minds, and this novel is probably the most interesting Holocaust story I've read in the last 5 years. ...more

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Oct 26, 2020 Paul Perry rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2020, fiction, literary, alternate-history, male-author, historical, war, european, murder-mystery, noir

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Wow.

As Tidhar's novel opens it seems to be an alternative history. We are in London in November 1939, but Europe is not at war. In this timeline, the Communist part took power in Germany in the early 1930s leading to disruption and many refugees fleeing to Britain, where Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists appears on course to win the election fuelled by anti-immigrant, -communist and -Jewish rhetoric.

One of these refugees is a man calling himself Wolf, who is working as a low-rent privat ...more

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Jan 13, 2015 Alex MacFarlane rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

In Auschwitz, shund-writer Shomer imagines a final pulp narrative: an alternate late 1930s Britain where the infamous Wolf is a down-on-his-luck PI. (I’ve got to say, as ‘unexpectedly fucking genius’ ideas go, this is up there...) That narrative is the majority of the book, but Auschwitz is never far, and it is more than a frame. The set-up allows a dialogue between the two realities: the rather obvious notions of ‘revenge fantasy’ and ‘wish-fulfilment’ colour Shomer’s imagined alternate Britain ...more

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May 21, 2016 Alistair rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I don't know how to rate this one? Definitely 4+ but maybe more?
Alternative history with a dark/adult flavour.
It is 1939-ish a writer of Yiddish pulp is in Auschwitz dreaming a 'noir detective' story.
Imagining an alternative reality nearly as dark and twisted as the one he is living. ...more

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Mar 03, 2015 Tracy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction, alternative-history

The premise reminds me of an ethics/philosophy exercise we did in middle school: We were asked would you save someone if they were drowning? Then, we were asked what if the man drowning was Hitler? Then another twist, what if the man was Hitler before he did anything, but, somehow, you knew he would in the future do terrible things? There are a lot of ways to argue and answer this exercise, but one of the things that stood out was that Hitler was always this embodiment of evil, the one to measur The premise reminds me of an ethics/philosophy exercise we did in middle school: We were asked would you save someone if they were drowning? Then, we were asked what if the man drowning was Hitler? Then another twist, what if the man was Hitler before he did anything, but, somehow, you knew he would in the future do terrible things? There are a lot of ways to argue and answer this exercise, but one of the things that stood out was that Hitler was always this embodiment of evil, the one to measure all else against. Tidhar's premise is an author is one of the prisoners at the Auschwitz concentration camp, and he dreams of this story where Hitler and the Nazis did not rise to power, the Communists took power, and Hitler is a failed nobody and refugee in England barely getting by as a private investigator. Most of the story is in Hitler's point of view and his journal entries when he takes on two cases--looking for a missing Jewish girl and uncovering assassination attempts against a political candidate--in which he uncovers a deeper conspiracy and a much bigger and darker picture of things happening.

Tidhar has a thing for alternative history twists with some surreal connection to the "real" world, noir settings, and private investigators. He also deals with controversial subjects and ideas. Asking what it is to be a man, be a hero, and how the line between not being either blurs. His Osama had an alternative world where Osama was a pulp fiction vigilante hero. In this book, he gets into Hitler's head for a majority of the story. On one level, it's a typical pulp detective story where the detective takes on a case that is more than it originally seemed, gets threatened and beat up a lot by dangerous men, and encounters dames of dubious honor. On another level, it is a character study of one of the most reviled and monstrous figures in history, though fleshed out in a fictional and fantasy context that blends history and fact with speculation and imagination to fill in the gaps and flesh it out into a coherent story. Like Hitler's artist background ties into how he views artists as bringing order to chaos, and how a detective too brings order. A lot of the story alternates between Hitler's story and his journal entries, getting into his head and his thoughts. Yet, getting into Hitler's head does not mean Tidhar portrays a misunderstood man or some hidden sentimentality and virtue or something that would make him more sympathetic. He does not pull punches. Usually, people see themselves as the hero of their own stories, and Hitler is no different, though he stretches that definition. Hitler's character is brutal, racist, bigoted, violent, repressed (expressing himself in disturbing ways), with a superiority complex, though defeated in this alternative world, so it's not hard to see this character as the one behind the Holocaust. Hitler is not a likeable character, but this story's portrayal makes him understandable and human, despicable as he still is. It shows Tidhar's writing skills that, he shows but does not tells readers what the final message is, does not tell readers what to think of Hitler. If it was just a simple role reversal or shock value, it would be superficial, and the author would have given it away by telling the story as an outsider. Tidhar's writing is nuanced with depth and careful research. He writes eloquently and delves into the dark side of human nature. Along with the mix of different perspectives, Hitler's journal entries, there's also a mystery shadow character who is a literal nobody (not memorable and almost a running joke with Hitler always forgetting his name), a foil of sorts, and who sees Hitler's potential. Hitler goes by the translation of his name, "Wolf" for most of the story, which had the effect of almost distancing this character from the historical figure, or a symbolic distancing of the man he could have been, a denial of sorts. It was an interesting effect, like the times other characters would recognize him, and he would try to avoid it or dismiss it.

The story alternates with the "real" world, going into the mind of an author who is a prisoner at Auschwitz, and Tidhar does not sugarcoat or gloss over those sections. Going into the alternative, "dream" world where Hitler is a detective is almost a safe way to explore his character. This is a dark, violent, disturbing story with graphic moments (of violence and sex), but it resonates with truth. His alternative world presents a plausible idea, a look at the bigger picture, a sense of scope. Hitler is practically a pawn in this alternative world, but he is the one who sticks his nose into things, ask questions, and eventually sees the bigger political picture. My school example assumes Hitler is some supreme representation of evil that the world would have been a better one without, but Tidhar's story argues that there's more evil than in just one man only. Even without a Hitler, someone else can rise to power, some other revolution and force can gain momentum, others can commit atrocities. This story is not some wish fulfillment or revenge fantasy. The sense of a bigger picture and complexity give depth to the story. Human nature is being explored here through one man's story. Tidhar includes footnotes of the historical details included, the research and speculation involved, and talks about his personal connection to the story--his own mother was born in a refugee camp to parents who were both at Auschwitz, and he had lost many family members to the Holocaust.

The works I've read from Tidhar (Violent Century, Osama, A Man Lies Dreaming) explore similar issues but are very different stories looking at the issues from different angles. I actually heard of Tidhar first through his steampunk fantasy Bookman Histories, which were ok and had interesting premises, but these alternative history stories stand out for their complex and dark stories and unflinching look at the darkness of human nature. This was not exactly pleasure or fun reading, but it was compelling and felt like it needed to be read. It gives you a lot to think about. Tidhar is an amazing writer. It's too bad he doesn't seem to be better known.

...more

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Jan 20, 2015 Mieneke rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, historical-fiction, crime, 2015

After 2013’s wonderful The Violent Century , which I loved, I couldn’t wait to read Lavie Tidhar’s 2014 release A Man Lies Dreaming. Luckily I was in London the week after it was released, so I got to pick up a copy soon after release. And I’m glad I sprung for the hardback version as it’s a beautiful book, physically speaking. The cover is deceptively simple yet very powerful and evocative and is not a dust cover, but has laminated boards, in other words it’s printed directly on the boards. After 2013’s wonderful The Violent Century , which I loved, I couldn’t wait to read Lavie Tidhar’s 2014 release A Man Lies Dreaming. Luckily I was in London the week after it was released, so I got to pick up a copy soon after release. And I’m glad I sprung for the hardback version as it’s a beautiful book, physically speaking. The cover is deceptively simple yet very powerful and evocative and is not a dust cover, but has laminated boards, in other words it’s printed directly on the boards. The novel contained within the covers is perhaps not so much beautiful as it is compelling. A Man Lies Dreaming isn’t an easy book to read, at least not for me, but it was absolutely engrossing.

What made book so hard to read, you might wonder? Its protagonist Mr Wolf, a.k.a. Hitler, is the book’s main character and for large sections its narrator as well and this made for a complicated reading experience. From childhood, I've been taught that Hitler and his ideologies embody all that is evil. There is no grey area there, Hitler equals evil. So for a book to have its protagonist be an alternate history Hitler, one that still believes everything the real Hitler believed, who is unpleasant, anti-Semitic, arrogant, suffers from a superiority complex, and is just in general a bit off, is a risk and is hard to pull off. Because, how can the reader relate to such a protagonist and read an entire book that focuses on such an unsympathetic and hateful character? In Lavie Tidhar's case by giving the reader a different character to focus her sympathies on – in the person of Shomer – and by making the mystery plot become ostensibly the core of the narrative. Almost every time I got too uncomfortable with Wolf's slurs, anti-semitism, and general misanthropy, Tidhar managed to just shift the narrative to Shomer or to create a diversion through a break in the case. In that aspect – and more generally – the book was impeccably paced.

The book has a strong Noir sensibility, reminiscent of Chandler and Hammett. As Shomer is a writer of shund – Yiddish pulp fiction; shund means trash in Yiddish – this isn't really surprising. You can find the usual dames and mobsters in the narrative and Wolf is your typical, hard-boiled gum shoe, apart from being who he is, of course. The mobsters pitted against each other are Jewish and Nazi’s. Many of the Nazi leaders have escaped now-Communist Germany and moved into the London underworld, using their old contacts to smuggle goods and people out of Germany. Only Wolf seems to have stayed on the right side of the law and even he isn’t much respected by the policemen he encounters. In fact, British politics are in upheaval because the British Union of Fascists led by Sir Oswald Mosley looks set to win the upcoming elections. Mosley’s ideas have gained traction in this alternate Britain and the Brits are becoming more and more resistant to immigrants and Jews. Additionally, political forces within the UK and the US are gearing up to take on the Red Scare now it has gained such solid footing in Germany.

Tidhar heaps layers upon layers of meaning; the exploration of revenge and most importantly redemption, the interesting ‘what if’ of whether the Second World War would have still happened if Hitler had lost the election to the communists in 1932, and the tragedy of Shomer’s story. But what stood out to me most, was the way that the commentary on what happened in the fictional then is valid for what is happening now. We are once again living in a world were there is a big opponent to unify against, though rather than the communists it’s Islamic extremists, and politicians once again are using popular dissatisfaction with their circumstances and their fear of a large conflict to whip up hate, fear and discrimination. There is Farage in the UK and Wilders here in the Netherlands, both of them loudly vilifying immigrants and wanting to close borders. Tidhar shows us two possible ways of how this might work out, directly in the case of Wolf’s alternate world, indirectly through Shomer’s framing narrative. Let’s hope that in our reality we will find a third, better way.

A Man Lies Dreaming is a fascinating narrative. It has left me wondering about Tidhar’s award-winning novel Osama and whether and if so how there are many thematic similarities between these two and if so, which ones. I guess this means I’ll have to scare myself up a copy of that one too. In the meantime, A Man Lies Dreaming is a must-read for anyone that likes books that make them think; it is complex, with plenty of meaty themes to mull over. I hope this book gets the critical acclaim and awards attention it so very much deserves. ...more

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Oct 30, 2014 David Harris rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

In this book, as with his earlier Osama, Tidhar plays games with an alternate version of a real monster. This brilliant, haunting book raises many questions about guilt, evil and redemption but gives few answers, instead, it leaves the reader to ponder.

In another time and place, it is November 1939. Down-at-heel German émigré Wolf is a Chandleresque private eye living in squalid Soho among prostitutes and posturing Blackshirts. In this reality, The Nazis never came to power in Germany, but fled In this book, as with his earlier Osama, Tidhar plays games with an alternate version of a real monster. This brilliant, haunting book raises many questions about guilt, evil and redemption but gives few answers, instead, it leaves the reader to ponder.

In another time and place, it is November 1939. Down-at-heel German émigré Wolf is a Chandleresque private eye living in squalid Soho among prostitutes and posturing Blackshirts. In this reality, The Nazis never came to power in Germany, but fled when the Communists took over. Wolf once was a Somebody, now he is a nobody, eking out a living as his old comrades prosper.

And, as befits a Chandleresque fantasy, one day, a dame walks in to Wolf's shabby office, a dame with a problem.

We soon learn that Wolf, too, has a problem - his client is Jewish, but he is an anti-semite, indeed, an ex-leader among anti-semites. So slternating between his diary entries and third person narration, we see him struggle with this case, a case he is forced to take on to stay alive in that very cold winter, but a case with which he becomes strangely absorbed.

The questions, of course, come straight away. Wolf, in the manner of PIs in Chandlerseque novels, is warned off, attacked, arrested, released and beaten again. He - the real Wolf, the man who rose to power - was an evil monster, so this must be deserved, surely? Yet the Wolf of the story, while vile, isn't that monster, is he? He took the first steps to monsterdom but never made it to the summit. Instead, here, in a swipe I think at current times, we see other monsters - Mosley and his followers - speaking of a country being "swamped" by foreigners, while Wolf sees the nationalist rhetoric turned against him and his Germans. We see American agents, proponents of "regime change". We see a murderer, watching from the shadows and killing those same prostitutes whom Wolf despises, but never harms.

If you're the sort of reader who has to have "sympathetic" characters, don't even start this, you simply won't get it. Nobody in London, 1939 - except perhaps one or two minor characters - is "sympathetic". They live in a tainted world, where the night has eyes, and all choices are bad ones.

Yet there are sympathetic characters in the book. Interleaved with Wolf's story are fragments of lives in the camps, where Shomer, a writer of Yiddish pulp tales, labours for his tormentors. Is Shomer dreaming Wolf? Yes, to a degree, though of course the detail of Wolf's life, the politics of 1939 England, the life Wolf lives is beyond what a Shomer would know. is Wolf, perhaps, dreaming Shomer, as he - Wolf - haunts a 1939 that seems to foretell 2014, with ghostly outlines of modern London and ghastly, hate filled rhetoric from a vile and bigoted politics.

How to write about the Holocaust? Tidhar asks this question explicitly and returns to it in his endnotes (which meticulously document what's true both in the camp narrative and in Wolf's life). Like this, is his answer. Compellingly, vividly, keeping those big questions of guilt, memory, good and evil in clear sight but never supplying glib answers.

It's an enthralling book, filled with violence, depravity, lots of graphic sex, humour (Wolf runs into his old friend Leni Riefenstahl, who's starring in a film about a little bar in a war-torn North Africa: "We'll always have Nuremburg" she sighs) but above all with intelligence and an unflinching view of history - both what it was and what it might be.

By far and away the best book I've read this year, confirming Tidhar, in my view, as a towering writer not just (just?) of fantasy but of literature. ...more

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Mar 07, 2015 Paul rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I was fascinated by the premise of this novel as soon as I first heard about it. An alternate history, told as a story within another story. I was right to be intrigued. A Man Lies Dreaming is a provocative, mesmerising experience. I finished the book earlier this week and I’m still pondering it now.

The scenes featuring Shomer in Auschwitz are heart breaking. His entire life has been utterly destroyed. His family and friends are gone, and now he only exists in his own personal hell. It feels alm I was fascinated by the premise of this novel as soon as I first heard about it. An alternate history, told as a story within another story. I was right to be intrigued. A Man Lies Dreaming is a provocative, mesmerising experience. I finished the book earlier this week and I’m still pondering it now.

The scenes featuring Shomer in Auschwitz are heart breaking. His entire life has been utterly destroyed. His family and friends are gone, and now he only exists in his own personal hell. It feels almost like events occur in a bubble, there is no past or present for Shomer, the camp is in a state of constant now. The only time when he is not controlled is when he is unconscious. Shomer’s mind uses these precious moments to take the only revenge a writer can, he eviscerates his enemy in fiction.

Wolf shares much in common with other literary gumshoes. He exists on the very periphery of London society. Downbeat and broken, this once a powerful man, a leader, finds himself surrounded by the dregs of society. In Shomer’s dreams of alternate London, Wolf is forced to suffer the ultimate degradation, to work for those who were once his enemies. Instead of completing his rise to power and plunging the world into a war, Wolf failed and is forced to flee his homeland. I like the idea that flipping the outcome of a single event completely rewrites a large chunk of twentieth century history. When writing Wolf’s story, Tidhar has used names and faces that you’ll recognise but their histories have subtly altered. It is curious to discover just how far reaching these changes are but also how other events have risen up to take their place. Wolf is a curious sight, driven by a sense of law and order. No matter where his case takes him he will see it through to the bitter end, irrespective of the cost. However, underneath this wafer thin veneer of civility lurks the power hungry despot who was willing to destroy complete races in order to further his own agenda.

Be warned, the writing in A Man Lies Dreaming pulls no punches. This is an exceptionally adult tale. There are graphic, violent and sexual moments throughout. In both London and Auschwitz, there are some horrible characters. Wolf’s former compatriots include a host of psychopaths, sadists and masochists. There will be scenes that I am sure many will consider harrowing, but it is well worth persevering. This is compelling fiction I had to keep reading. At times I may have wanted to, but I certainly couldn’t look away.

Wolf revels in his old glories, in what he could/should have been, while in the camp Shomer tries to do anything to blot out the carnival of ever present horrors. The split narrative is used very effectively. There are even moments where scenes weave from one strand to another and then back again. Prior to reading, I was concerned that this might be to quite complicated or problematic to follow. I needn’t have worried; Tidhar pulls this off with skilful aplomb. The author treats the source material with a delicate, reverential touch. He has used a horrific chapter in history and crafted a story that explores the best and worst aspects of humanity. This novel truly is exceptional. ...more

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Nov 14, 2020 Robert Ronsson rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

(Thanks to Paul Perry whose review prompted me to read this.)
Is this a work of genius? I want to say yes but while reading it part of me rejected the idea. It’s certainly engrossing and I admire ithe ludic quality of sentences like this: He brought his stick down once agin, right on the typewriter smashing it to pieces. Keys flew in the air; a semi-colon hit me in the eye. I wallowed in that piece of writing for much longer than it took me to read it.
For such a dark book there is much to admire ...more

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May 02, 2018 Melanie (Perpetually Reading) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery, thought-provoking, fantasy, books-i-own-and-have-read, historical-fiction

I haven't had a chance to read many stories with an alternate history plot, but A Man Lies Dreaming had me scrambling for more in this genre.

The story starts with Wolf, an anti-Semitic down-and-out detective, who accepts a job from a well-to-do Jewish girl to find her sister. The twist in this world is that the Nazis (and therefore Hitler) never came to power in Germany, and was beaten in the elections by the Communists. As we navigate this topsy-turvy world with Wolf, the story also cuts to th ...more

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May 16, 2018 Angus Watson rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I had the good fortune to hang out with Lavie Tidhar in Summer 2017 at Polcon, a convention in Lublin, Poland where we were guest foreign authors. The moment we met (actually we’d met a week before at a publisher’s party in London, but he’d forgotten) Lavie harangued me for pronouncing his name incorrectly. (The correct pronunciation, in case you’re wondering, is “Lavvy” like the abbreviation of lavatory and Ta-dah!!, like a man pulling a rabbit from a hat)
Lavie was intriguing company over the n ...more

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Sep 10, 2014 Karina rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2016

Is it even possible to write a WW2 alternate history without someone, somewhere, reviewing it as "the new Man in the High Castle"? This isn't the new Man in the High Castle. Lavie Tidhar can do PKD-esque very well, as demonstrated in Osama, but - this is a different flavour. And the protagonist is a private eye in London, a man who came from Germany and used to have a thin mustache.

Audiobook note: This took me a loong time to get through, because, while the mostly-aggressive "German accent" is ...more

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Jun 23, 2016 Elizabeth☮ rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: recent-reads

Initially I found this to be pretty insane. But as I have thought about it all day, I think I can now see the genius in Tidhar's novel.

We get an alternate history in which Hitler is a detective in London named Wolf. The year is 1939 and Hitler's rise to power is thwarted. Now, to make ends meet, he is stuck being a proctor investigator (much to his own embarrassment).

We also hear from Shomer. He is a prisoner in Auschwitz. And his reality is a stark contrast to Wolf's.

As the story unfolds, yo ...more

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Jan 04, 2016 Renita D'Silva rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Clever, brilliantly researched, subversive and intelligent. Loved this extremely sharp, insightful and imaginative read.

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Jun 14, 2017 T. Frohock rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I've seen a lot of people point to this book as alternative history, but that wasn't my takeaway from the novel. To categorize the book as alternative history changes the focus from the dreamer (Shomer) and shifts the novel to become Hitler's story. That was not how I read the story.

A MAN LIES DREAMING is Shomer's story. It is Shomer who is "writing" Hitler as detective in order to debase him. For every humiliation Shomer is forced to endure, he "writes" that many more for his detective Wolf (Hi ...more

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May 21, 2017 Marc rated it it was ok · review of another edition

No too brilliant. For instance, if I hadn't read the blurb, I wouldn't have realised that the story is fantasized by Shomer. There is a lot of sex and violence, the humiliating type, and the main character, Wolf, is all bad. That may be OK for a Netflix series, that I would probably not have finished, but not for an interesting book. If it was the aim of the writer to write a "shund" novel, he has succeeded, but for me that is not an interesting feat. ...more

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About Lavie Tidhar

Lavie Tidhar

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Lavie Tidhar was raised on a kibbutz in Israel. He has travelled extensively since he was a teenager, living in South Africa, the UK, Laos, and the small island nation of Vanuatu.

Tidhar began publishing with a poetry collection in Hebrew in 1998, but soon moved to fiction, becoming a prolific author of short stories early in the 21st century.

Temporal Spiders, Spatial Webs won the 2003 Clarke-Bradb ...more

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“What is a man! What is a man but mended cloth, hastily worn and discarded? ... What makes a man? What makes a hero, Shomer? Is it simply to live when there is nothing left to live for, when all you knew and loved is gone? Is it, simply, to survive? For like the threads of an intricate shawl, we have been pulled at and torn, Shomer. We have been unravelled.” — 4 likes

“...it is a truth universally acknowledged, that once a detective acquires two concurrent cases, the two must be in some way related.
I call it Wolf's Law.” — 0 likes

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