Head of Zeus is delighted to be publishing Adama by Lavie Tidhar, the second literary novel from the author of Maror, which was named ‘a literary triumph’ (Guardian), ‘startlingly refreshing’ (Daily Mail) and ‘an earthquake of a book’ (Crime Time). It was a Guardian and Economist Book of the Year. 

CEO and Publisher Nicolas Cheetham acquired UK & Commonwealth (excluding Canada) rights in Adama for Head of Zeus from John Berlyne at the Zeno Agency Ltd. The novel will be published in hardback and ebook, under the Apollo Fiction imprint, on 14 September 2023. 

Adama ('land') follows the critically acclaimed Maror ('bitter herbs') as the second book in a hugely ambitious, asynchronous trilogy charting the genesis and evolution of the State of Israel. Where Maror spanned 1974–2004, Adama reaches back to 1946 and the aftermath of World War Two. Like Maror, Adama crosses decades and continents, but draws on Lavie’s own experience growing up on a kibbutz to tell the four-generational story of one woman’s determination to build a better world – whatever that may take.

Here's our first blurb:

‘I water this land with the blood of my men’

Ruth’s family were in Budapest when the Nazis came. 

Now Ruth is in Palestine, amid the bare hills inland from Haifa, breaking the rocky soil of an unyielding land before it breaks her.

With her comrades, her fellow kibbutzniks, she will build a better world. There will be green grass, orange trees and pomegranates, a land that is their own and no one else’s. So they till their fields, dig their wells, build their homes and forge a new way of living, fiercely proud of their shared pursuit of a dream.

But as one generation begets another, the dream unravels, twisted into a dark tapestry of secrets and lies, sacrificed for revenge, forbidden love and murder.

Lavie Tidhar said, ‘There’s a dark joy in going back to one’s strange childhood to discover the truths behind the façade – of how a map is redrawn and villages erased, done by people who will do anything in pursuit of their ideals. Adama was another deep-dive into the well of real historical events, discovering for myself life in the Displaced Persons camps in Germany where my own mother was born, of the British-ruled world my grandparents moved in and the wars my parents’ generation fought. It is a book, I think, of just what happens when people try to make their dreams come true.’

Lavie Tidhar was born just ten miles from Armageddon and grew up on a kibbutz in northern Israel. He has since made his home in London. He won the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize for Best British Fiction, was twice longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award and was shortlisted for the CWA Dagger Award and the Rome Prize. He co-wrote Art and War: Poetry, Pulp and Politics in Israeli Fiction, and is a former columnist for the Washington Post.