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VENGEANCE (Catapult, February 2018)
"Does life—anyone’s life—have an inherent design, and does that design hold meaning? In some ways, such a deft and supple novel can’t help but voice confidence in its own methods, or at least find redeeming value in the devices of fiction. One of the reverberating refrains in the book is an assertion of celestial order out of Shakespeare: “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends.” Another is the notion of tikkun olam, the Hebrew phrase that means “repairing the world.” “In the Jewish mystical tradition,” Lazar writes, “the ten vessels that contained the emanation of God’s light, the sephirot, could not withstand the pressure and exploded. . . . Our task on earth, according to this myth, was to repair the shattered vessels, the shattered world, which meant first of all that we had to pay careful attention to it.” “Vengeance,” itself a tissue of echoes and associations that asks the reader to fill in its gaps, is not ready to dismiss the world’s jumble of shards as meaningless. Attention—that which weaves together disparate points—can close a wound, or make a broken vessel whole." The New Yorker "Throughout the novel, we feel heartbreaking possibility, the near miss of lives that might have been...Lazar and his narrator both know that we are humanized through contact with other people, through stories, whether fiction or nonfiction or some combination of both. The New York Times Book Review “Zachary Lazar's Vengeance is an elegant act of imagination and empathy that shows just how easily these can curdle, sometimes irretrievably, into skepticism and self-doubt. It's the story of a writer with a haunted past who meets, on a visit to Angola, a prisoner currently serving a life sentence for murder. Does he belong in prison, or is he, as he credibly claims, an innocent man? Or is the truth only ever a matter of speculation and the stories we choose to tell?” ―Joshua Ferris "I am stunned by the daring, meticulous, and unsentimental intelligence of this riveting book... Vengeance is a masterwork, the most important American book I've read this year, and the most moving and mesmerizing. ―Francisco Goldman, author of Say Her Name “More than any book I’ve read in the twenty-first century, Zachary Lazar’s Vengeance makes the reader reckon with the questions of what’s real, what’s imagined, and why those questions matter more now than at any other time in our nation. . . . Vengeance reminds me of what is possible through deft, imaginative, ‘real’ storytelling.” ―Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy |
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I PITY THE POOR IMMIGRANT (Little, Brown, 2014)
“I Pity the Poor Immigrant is work of intricate and precise mystery, a book that is like a bold monument in an empty desert, a thing built of dread, and silences, and dazzling elegance, by a worldly and masterful hand.” --Rachel Kushner, National Book Award finalist for The Flamethrowers “Conveys on every page a radical intensity of emotion and intellect. It's epic in scope and yet, in bursts of fine flinty prose, of great economy.” —Joshua Ferris, author of The Unnamed "Lazar juggles the elliptical and fragmented narrative effectively; he is also an excellent stylist, cleverly mimicking multiple forms... An interesting and challenging novel." – Publishers Weekly “Complex and artful.” – Kirkus Reviews In 1972, American gangster Meyer Lansky petitioned the Israeli government for citizenship. His request was denied, he was returned to the United States to stand trial, and was acquitted. Although he lived out his life in the comfort of Miami Beach, he continued to dream about returning to Israel until he died. Zachary Lazar wanted to understand why, and the result is the stunning novel I PITY THE POOR IMMIGRANT. Interwoven with Lansky’s story is the story of American journalist Hannah Groff, who in 2009 travels to Israel to investigate the killing of an Israeli writer. She soon finds herself inside a web of violence that takes in the American and Israeli Mafias, the biblical figure of King David, and the modern state of Israel. As she connects the dots between the murdered writer, Lansky, his left-behind mistress, Gila, and her own father, Hannah becomes increasingly obsessed with the dark side of her heritage. Already being hailed as “a true portrait of history… beautifully brought together by a master craftsman,” by Antonya Nelson, I PITY THE POOR IMMIGRANT is part crime-story, part spiritual quest, and a novelistic consideration of Jewish identity. |
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EVENING’S EMPIRE: The Story of My Father’s Murder (Little, Brown, 2009)
“An amazing feat of filial piety... Reading Evening’s Empire, you can’t help but remember Death of a Salesman. ‘Attention must be paid,’ Willy Loman’s anguished wife recites, and the same imperative applies here. It’s terribly sad, this book. The author wants to honor his father, in the Old Testament sense of those words, but he’s also bound by hard truth. He sees the pettiness, the futility. America, meet your pathetic hopes and dreams. Zachary, you’ve accomplished an amazing feat of filial piety” –Carolyn See, Washington Post A Chicago Tribune best book of 2009 A 2009 “must-read” from: GQ Newsday Time Out New York Salon Praise for Evening’s Empire “One of the big themes of Evening’s Empire is the writer’s uneasy quest to understand how his father got mixed up in something criminal. Perhaps an even bigger question, additionally poignant because it is never quite articulated: Was the father a good guy or a bad guy?...The style is gorgeous—understated, precise, atmospheric. Like a pointillist painter, Lazar gives us vivid dots that are all the more powerful because we have to do the work or connecting them….This is a personal story, and it’s in the sections where the personal is acknowledged that Evening’s Empire has its greatest power….It’s a spotty, murky, haunting story, told by a son who understands it better than his father ever could have.” –Joan Wickersham, The Los Angeles Times “’It was something out of a movie—not even a realistic movie,’ reflects Zachary Lazar, struggling to reconstruct his father’s inconceivable slide into scandal, corruption, and murder…. When irrefutable facts are few, the wise author resorts to atmosphere… Evening’s Empire is an artful exercise in reportorial chiaroscuro.” –Amanda Heller, Boston Globe “Although Evening’s Empire is categorized as both memoir and true crime, much of the book reads as a novel. . . .The multiplication of Warren’s intrigues and a cumulative sense of doom supply its narrative drive.” -Laura Miller, “Recommended Books,” Salon.com “'True crime’ has such a florid, overdressed reputation that it pays to remember the genre's monuments --In Cold Blood or The Executioner's Song--are marked by their bloodless eloquence. Even the chronically feverish James Ellroy restrained himself in My Dark Places, a coolly deliberate autopsy of his mother's murder. It makes sense: For all the exhaustive research, interviews and controlled dispassion, the identity of the real villain in these stories—profound personal loss—is known before you crack the covers. It’s deprivation that breeds anger, and cosmic anger that runs these stories. The same can be said of Zachary Lazar’s remarkable Evening’s Empire….which, as Bob Dylan told us, ‘has returned into sand’—is a brave book, a project that promised to pay off its author in pain. What was Lazar going to discover about his dead father? He may not have had memories, but he must have erected a memorial in his mind for the father he lost so young….via his effort [he] achieves a literary catharsis.” –John Anderson, Newsday “An indelible portrait of the Space Age suburbs and an American dream built on fraud.” –Timothy Holder, “The Daily Details,” Details.com “EVENING’S EMPIRE is a fascinating take on a time and a place, built from the inside out by a conspicuously interested party, as entertaining and evocative as could be, like a Scorsese movie, only richer, more thrilling for the memoir-like underpinnings. The story of Zachary Lazar’s father is tricky and slippery, as mysterious as all those lights in the sky Arizona is so famous for, but much more human and down to earth. You'll want to put this one in the can't-put-it-down pile.” –Frederick Barthelme, author of the memoir DOUBLEDOWN and WAVELAND “Zachary Lazar has managed an amazing feat—to evoke both Joan Didion’s fierce intelligence and Truman Capote’s eerie ability to enter into the unknown. And then there’s the deep river of heartbreak flowing beneath it all. Evening’s Empire is an incandescent masterpiece.” –Nick Flynn, author of the memoirs Another Bullshit Night in Suck City and The Ticking Is the Bomb “Evening’s Empire is a remarkable work of non-fiction in which reporting and imaginative empathy combine. Lazar’s story of the murder of his father is spooky, sharply-focused, loving, beautiful, and richly redolent of a recent America now vanished into the past.” –Ian Frazier, author of Family and Travels in Siberia “Evening’s Empire is a brilliantly conceived, genre-bending story that features taut, exquisite prose about the murder of Zachary Lazar’s father, via modes of the memoir, the novel, and investigative journalism.” –Chang-rae Lee, author of Native Speaker and The Surrendered “Zachary Lazar has written a gripping book of unexpected beauty. In Evening’s Empire, he remorselessly examines the ambiguous nature of both the shady deal and the good life. His analytic impulses soar with breathtaking imaginative leaps.” –Christopher Sorrentino, author of Trance, a finalist for the 2005 National Book Award for Fiction “Using interviews, research and his ample storytelling gifts, Lazar guides us through the career of his father…. Like Sway, the book has a heightened sense for the subtleties of influence and charisma, particularly Warren’s….Lazar can deliver scenes of criminal behavior that’s at once deeply disturbing and morbidly comic….[Evening’s Empire] reveals a writer with emotional heft, tight prose, and searing insights into the complexities of a criminal world that must have looked pretty harmless—until it suddenly wasn’t.” –Michael Miller, BookForum “Evening’s Empire, which may be as close to watching a Scorsese film as one can get on the page, is infused with heat and action, jumpy snitches and crooked politicians and Chicago mobsters… And yet Zachary Lazar also keeps it cool, playing the narrative much as Joan Didion does, the emotional withholding and near invisible release, as much happening between the lines as on them.” –Nancy Rommelmann, Oregonian “Zachary Lazar deserves credit for doing something most children can’t: look for the flaws in their parents after their death” –Mac Engel, Dallas-Fort Worth Star-Telegram “Zachary Lazar channels Joan Didion in this unapologetically literary account of his father’s murder.” –Tom Beer, Newsday “Fascinating…[Lazar] breaks down the late Edward Lazar’s life, motivations and mistakes in haunting, tragic detail. The result is part documentary, part narrative, a bold, immaculately planned study of what can go wrong in the quest for money, and the devastation of the American family…A fantastic true crime tale, and a stunning follow-up to Lazar’s Sway…Note the style—spare, direct, with a distinct lack of melodramatic flourish. This is as it should be. Lazar knows his father died brutally, and without mercy, and his text matches….The book is his tribute to his father, and his opportunity to show the man that he does, indeed, hold him close to his heart.” –Christopher Schobert, The Buffalo News |
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SWAY (Little, Brown, 2008)
A “dark swirl of a novel” about Charles Manson, the Rolling Stones and the avant-gard filmmaker Kenneth Anger. A Best Book of 2008 from: The L.A Times Rolling Stone Newsday Time Out New York Publishers Weekly The St. Louis Post-Dispatch PopMatters Praise for Sway “Zachary Lazar’s superb second novel, Sway, reads like your parents’ nightmare idea of what would happen to you if you fell under the spell of rock ‘n’ roll…Elegant and intricate…this brilliant novel is about what’s to be found in the shadows.” –Charles Taylor, New York Times Book Review “Lazar has created a powerful, infernal prism through which to view the potent, still-rippling contradictions of the late ‘60s. It’s no mean feat. Despite the era’s nearly impossible richness, fresh insights are hard to come by.” –Mark Rozzo, Los Angeles Times Book Review “Deft and persuasive…One succumbs to this richly imagined, hauntingly vivid novel, wherein everyone falls under the sway of someone or something.” –Gregory Leon Miller, San Francisco Chronicle “A rare find, both violent and beautiful.” –GQ “Mesmerizing…A nightmarish journey through the era, a guided tour through the excess, violence and occultism…It takes Lazar’s deft touch to evoke the cult of death in the early Stones.” –Amy Woods Butler, St. Louis Dispatch “Sway is daring, precise, and unsentimental. Lazar’s details always feel exactly right in this deeply contemporary novel that leads to a cultural moment we can’t seem to recover from: 1969.” —Dana Spiotta, author of Eat the Document, National Book Award Finalist, 2006 “One hypnotic tone poem…. It is not the now-historic acts of violence that make Sway so riveting, but its vivid character portraits and decadent, muzzy atmosphere, all rendered with the heightened sensory awareness associated with drugs and paranoia. The near miniaturist precision with which he describes Keith Richards’s attempts to master his guitar, Brian Jones’s acid trips and Anger’s obsessive desire for Beausoleil bring this large-scale tableau into stunning relief.” –Liz Brown, Time Out New York “[Lazar] brilliantly highlights the fragility of an era when “everyone under thirty has decided that they’re an exception-a musician, a runaway, an artist, a star.” –Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Zachary Lazar’s novel Sway makes a convincing case that dark forces can be summoned with the right incantation…this is the story of a bizarre convergence of real lives overlapping…. It’s about the compulsion to find the edge by plunging over it.” –Patrick Beach, Austin American-Statesman “Sway is really brilliant. I savored every sentence with as much exquisitely protracted languor as humanly possible. To inhabit and animate and choreograph the psyches of these mythic icons with such delicately registered emotion is simply extraordinary.” –Mark Leyner “Our investment in these fragile, intensely human figures is profound…. Nothing in Sway is writ large, but by carefully mapping the terrain separating the artist from the muse and the genius from the madman, Lazar makes the atmosphere of a decade almost palpable.” –Adam Mansbach, The Boston Globe “Rendering fictional characters from public figures is a dodgy business at the best of times—especially so figures who have lived as publicly as the Stones and Charlie Manson. But Lazar, an American, makes the ploy work by keeping a cool, myth-sustaining distance from his players, focusing instead on the thread of black magic he’s weaving. . . .As a kind of novelistic tone poem, Sway has a dark and propulsive power.” –Geoff Pevere, Toronto Star “Zachary Lazar begins where Didion left off in his fiercely imagined, kaleidoscopic novel.” –Jonathan Ringen, Rolling Stone “As a painter might do with a brush and canvas, Lazar uses words in his new novel Sway to fashion a restrained but seductive portrait of lives intersecting in the tumultuous 1960s.” –Stephen Williams, Newsday “Visual imagination pervades the novel, whether meticulously re-describing the shots in Anger’s films, or tracing the acid-fuelled hypersensitivity of Jones to the sights of Marrakech…a disorienting, densely imagined view of allure and danger.” –Bharat Tandon, Times Literary Supplement (UK) “A dark, intricate eulogy to the bloody death of Sixties idealism.” –Esquire (UK) “In a dream-like, often nightmarish, fashion, Sway carries the reader into the early years of the Rolling Stones, complete with juicy bits…. The writing is always beautiful.” –Juliet Waldron, Historical Novels Review “Lazar's hugely impressive achievement is to evoke the energy of an over-documented time in a new way...Lazar's feel for the dialogue of Jagger and Richards, for their louche humour, is so instinctive that you forget that what you're reading is an extrapolation. As dark and enigmatic as its central subjects, Sway often feels like a whole new genre of folklore fiction...it's irresistible.” –Tom Cox, The Daily Mail (UK) “Sway is a gripping and masterful novel about the Manson murders, the early years of the Rolling Stones, Kenneth Anger, and the dark heart of the 1960s.” —Akhil Sharma, author of An Obedient Father “Joseph Conrad said that fiction is primarily a visual art; he would have loved Zachary Lazar’s Sway for the thousand indelible visual details of a startling originality—and for Lazar’s ability to shine a light into the contemporary heart of darkness.” —Edmund White, author of A Boy’s Own Story “A coruscating, kaleidoscopic vision of the 60s, Lazar’s Sway is at once an intimate re-imagining of iconic figures and an expansive meditation on an epoch that reverberates to this day. An enthralling read, shot through with flashes of edgy beauty and dark wisdom.” —Peter Ho Davies, author of The Welsh Girl “It’s not easy to say exactly why I was so blown away by Sway. Was it the scintillating intelligence of Lazar’s prose? His cunning characterization of an era? The sense of every sentence taking me to a new place? His brilliant portrayal of life as a legend? Surely some combination of all of these, and more besides. But I hope many, many readers will soon find themselves in this position of inexpressible admiration.” —Margot Livesey, author of Eva Moves the Furniture and Banishing Verona “The ending has a powerful kick, and we’re still hearing its echoes. A skillful dramatization of the consequences of making and inhabiting your own world. The Stones ought to write a song about it.” –Kirkus Reviews “Almost every page contains an arresting observation…. Sway is a study of layers of manipulation and control…But in the end, the most haunting spell is the one that Lazar casts over the reader.” –Mick Brown, Telegraph (UK) |