PRAISE FOR VENGEANCE:

"This powerful new novel about a murder investigation, mass incarceration, and the monstrously powerful, profoundly entrenched structural racism in the United States, reads like the best investigative journalism. But it is also deeply literary―with vividly drawn characters, a compelling narrative arc, and philosophical reflections on the nature of justice and perception." ―Library Journal

"Vengeance is profound in its exploration of the U.S. penal system. It's empathetic without being sentimental in the treatment of its characters, both in and outside the walls of the prison. Lazar's novel is a beautiful specimen of storytelling while simultaneously challenging its audience to reach deep and question the very core of their beliefs. . . . Settle in and prepare to be changed by this powerful novel." ―Jen Forbus, Shelf Awareness

"Readers looking for an analytical, thorough examination of the justice system will find much to consider here." ―Publishers Weekly

"The impact recalls Capote and In Cold Blood, as I say, but when Vengeance cites an American writer of that era, it’s James Baldwin in Notes of a Native Son, raising a cry about the “bewildered rage” of the country’s disenfranchised. Those locked out of the feast at least enjoy a fresh hearing in this text, a half-century after Notes. In so doing, too, the work joins one of the most important of the last several years, Jenny Erpenbeck’s Go, Went, Gone. The German novel considers the pariahs of that country, the new African refugees, and like Vengeance it’s a product of challenging research; as Lazar went to Angola, Erpenbeck went to protests and asylums. Across oceans, comparable talents fled their comfort zones and tested their skills out in harder country, in the process both bringing honor to their art and reclaiming one of its essential purposes: to stand on the watchtower and tell us of the night." --John Domini, The Brooklyn Rail



PRAISE FOR I PITY THE POOR IMMIGRANT: 

The Wall Street Journal (4/11/2014)
Tablet, a new read on Jewish life (4/14/2014)
The New York Times (4/25/2014)
The New Yorker (6/23/2014)
The San Francisco Chronicle (7/17/2014)



INTERVIEWS WITH ZACHARY LAZAR

Los Angeles Times (4/4/2014)
TheTimes-Picayune of New Orleans (4/5/2014)
The Rumpus (4/10/2014)
Authorlink (5/1/2014)