“I don’t know how to write any other way.”Īnd so The Betrayers is deeply rooted in his Russian Jewish heritage, set in Ukraine with the Gaza-Israel conflict providing the catalyst for the action.īezmozgis emigrated from Latvia to Toronto with his parents in 1980, when he was 6 years old.

“The only pressure is personal, artistic pressure to write good work,” he says. Bezmozgis was also included in The New Yorker’s 20 Under 40 issue of most promising fiction writers.īezmozgis, now 41, seems fairly sanguine about the attention. Next a novel, The Free World, nominated for a Giller award, a Governor General’s Award and winner of the Amazon.ca First Novel Award. Its Toronto author has won numerous awards for his previous books.įirst there was Natasha and Other Stories, which won the Toronto Book Award and Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for Best First Book.

There are great expectations for The Betrayers. I’d like to understand myself and my own morality.” “As a father of three daughters I would like to be a good example to them. “These are questions we should all be asking ourselves,” says Bezmozgis. But it’s not just a political story it’s a moral story, of how people react under pressure, whether they stick to their principles, whether they can be heroic: what it means to be a moral person.

When you read David Bezmozgis’ book The Betrayers, you might be surprised to find a Ukraine that isn’t under siege.Īlthough the book is set in the present day, real-life events have overtaken its political context.

The betrayers by david bezmozgis