The Violent Century

2015 Longlist

They’d never meant to be heroes.

For seventy years they guarded the British Empire. Oblivion and Fogg, inseparable friends, bound together by a shared fate. Until one night in Berlin, in the aftermath of the Second World War, and a secret that tore them apart.

But there must always be an account… and the past has a habit of catching up to the present.

Now, recalled to the Retirement Bureau from which no one can retire, Fogg and Oblivion must face up to a past of terrible war and unacknowledged heroism, – a life of dusty corridors and secret rooms, of furtive meetings and blood-stained fields – to answer one last, impossible question:       What makes a hero?

(From Publisher)

About the Author

Lavie Tidhar is the World Fantasy Award winning author of Osama, of The Bookman Histories trilogy and many other works. He also won the British Fantasy Award for Best Novella, for Gorel & The Pot-Bellied God, and was nominated variously for the British Science Fiction Association, Campbell, Sturgeon, Kitschies and Sidewise awards. He grew up on a kibbutz in Israel and in South Africa and currently resides in London.

Librarian’s Comments

Tidhar uses superheroes to tell us the story of the 20th and 21st centuries. He has his tongue in cheek, but is serious to the last letter.