Two men meet on a park bench in Jerusalem: Baruch Kotler, an Israeli politician who publicly opposes withdrawal from the occupied territories in Palestine, and a Mossad agent sent to blackmail him into changing his mind. Kotler refuses, and flees with his young mistress to the Crimean resort of Yalta to escape a scandal. There he comes face to face with his past in the shape of the Moscow room-mate who, 40 years before, had denounced him to the KGB. Tankilevich is now living in poverty – “four chickens from the grave” – and is as reviled as Kotler is revered. Together they represent man’s eternal struggle between good and evil, between the demons of the past and the possibilities of the future. This is an ambitious novel, particularly given the challenges posed by the upheavals in Crimea, but Bezmozgis handles the questions he raises with a skill and style as remarkable as they are memorable.
