{"product_id":"the-lion-seeker-isbn-9780544334519","title":"The Lion Seeker","description":"\u003cstrong\u003eNational Jewish Book Award Winner: A family saga set in WWII-era South Africa offering both “page-turning thrills [and] a painful meditation on destiny” (\u003cem\u003eNPR, All Things Considered\u003c\/em\u003e).\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCalled “a latter-day \u003cem\u003eExodus\u003c\/em\u003e” by \u003cem\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003eThe Lion Seeker\u003c\/em\u003e is an epic historical novel centered on the life of Isaac Helger. The son of Lithuanian Jewish immigrants, he runs around the streets of Johannesburg as a young hooligan and dreams of getting rich. But his parents are still haunted by the memories of the anti-Semitic pogroms they escaped, even as Isaac secretly pursues a relationship with a gentile girl.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eAs the Nazi threat rises, Isaac is caught between his mother’s urgent ambition to bring her sisters to safety out of the old world, and his own desire to enjoy the freedoms of the new. But soon his mother’s carefully guarded secret takes them to the diamond mines, where mysteries are unveiled in the desert rocks and Isaac begins to learn the bittersweet reality of success bought at any cost. | \u003cp\u003e\"What a rare and splendid achievement this novel is—emotionally gripping, intellectually challenging, deftly plotted, skillfully composed, and vibrantly alive with the images and sounds and textures and human flurry of another time and place. I was dazzled. And I was moved.\" \u003cbr\u003e—Tim O’Brien \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"[Isaac's] is a story of fighting and deciding what's worth fighting for, of cultivating a strength that doesn't erase empathy. . . The pages turn quickly, with suspenseful prose and colorful vernacular dialogue that could easily be used in a blockbuster film.\" \u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"[\u003ci\u003eThe Lion Seeker\u003c\/i\u003e] will grab readers everywhere with the story of the struggling refugees in a new country, the horror they escaped from, and the guilt about those left behind, with secrets not revealed until the very end. . . The immigrant family struggle comes across as universal, whether concerning radicals or the ultra-Orthodox. . . A great choice for book-group discussion.\" \u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eBooklist \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"South African-born Canadian writer Bonert serves up a latter-day \u003ci\u003eExodus\u003c\/i\u003e in this debut novel.\" \u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"Kenneth Bonert’s raw and ambitious novel of working-class Jewish life in South Africa in the 1930s and 40s...[an] ambitious and unruly novel.\"\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eMoment Magazine \u003c\/i\u003e  \"Here is the South African novel I've been waiting for. Kenneth Bonert tells it true, not safe. His protagonist is worthy of Isaac Bashevis Singer, and the South Africa he gives us vivid, raw, dangerous, shot through with moral complexity.\" \u003cbr\u003e—Lynn Freed, author of \u003ci\u003eHouse of Women\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Servants' Quarters \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eThe Lion Seeker\u003c\/i\u003e is a powerful and thoroughly engrossing novel, grand in scope, richly imagined, full of dramatic incident, and crafted in a prose that is by turns roughhewn and lyrical. To read it is to be reminded how great a great novel can be.\" \u003cbr\u003e—David Bezmozgis, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Free World\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eNatasha: And Other Stories\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A remarkably assured debut, \u003ci\u003eThe Lion Seeker\u003c\/i\u003e is a riveting, lyrical, and profound journey towards the intersection of private lives and public destinies. Kenneth Bonert has all the makings of a major novelist.\" \u003cbr\u003e—Charles Foran, author of \u003ci\u003eMordecai: The Life and Times\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eThe Lion Seeker \u003c\/i\u003eis no-holds-barred, bare-knuckle-fight raw. A historical novel that feels desperately current; a \u003ci\u003eRosenburg and Juliet \u003c\/i\u003elove story shorn of all sentiment; a stock-taking of human brutality and its flip side, our capacity to reach beyond our limitations and \u003ci\u003ebe better, \u003c\/i\u003eall rendered in prose so expert, so fine honed that it belies the adjective ‘debut.’ It joins classics like J.M. Coetzee’s \u003ci\u003eDisgrace \u003c\/i\u003eand Rian Malan’s \u003ci\u003eMy Traitor’s Heart \u003c\/i\u003ein the canon, and renders the South African experience universal. A first-round knock-out for Kenneth Bonert.\" \u003cbr\u003e—Richard Poplak, author of \u003ci\u003eJa No Man: Growing Up White in Apartheid-Era South Africa\u003c\/i\u003e   \"This powerful novel begins with a mystery that propels its characters through their difficult lives in prewar South Africa and haunts their actions until a dramatic and searing climax based on the Holocaust in Lithuania. \u003ci\u003eThe Lion Seeker\u003c\/i\u003e is vivid and illuminating, astonishing in its range and toughness, and simultaneously an expression of love and regret for all that has been lost.\" \u003cbr\u003e—Antanas Sileika, author of \u003ci\u003eUnderground \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eWoman in Bronze\u003c\/i\u003e and Director of the Humber School for Writers \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePraise from abroad for \u003ci\u003eThe Lion Seeker\u003c\/i\u003e: \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"An emotional tour de force that plumbs the depths of human hope, fear, guilt, and rage, and bears all the hallmarks of a masterwork.\" \u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eBallast\u003c\/i\u003e (Canada) \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A titanic novel. . . An epic, a vast story about a rarefied subject: the community of Ashkenazi Jews who emigrated to South Africa before World War II. . . Mazel tov, Kenneth Bonert, you have written a blockbuster of a book.\" \u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eToronto Star\u003c\/i\u003e (Canada) \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Bonert's prose is sharp and masterful, clipping along at a breathless pace while still managing to wow us with imagery, clever turns of phrase and believable dialogue peppered with several languages.\" \u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eGlobe and Mail\u003c\/i\u003e (Canada) \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eThe Lion Seeker\u003c\/i\u003e is astonishingly mature, admirably incautious. It moves with the sleight-of-hand of the born artist, ramping up for naked tugs at the heart. . . It's visually and thematically sweeping, rich with diverse personalities, packed with tender waves and roiling crests of love, loss, hope, hatred. It casts its bit players (even a final-act dog) as deftly as its stars. . . This novel, quite apart from what it might become, remains completely and thrillingly itself.\" \u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eNational Post\u003c\/i\u003e (Canada) \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"If not for the setting-South Africa in the 1930s and '40s-the novel's hapless protagonist could have been plucked from the doom-laden pages of Thomas Hardy. . . \u003ci\u003eThe Lion Seeker\u003c\/i\u003e, like its 19th-century literary forebears, is larded with enough plot twists, reversals of fortune, and revelations of family secrets to keep many readers engrossed.\" \u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eQuill \u0026amp; Quire\u003c\/i\u003e (Canada)\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Harper Perennial","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44890033488101,"sku":"NP9780544334519","price":18.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780544334519.jpg?v=1730232412","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-lion-seeker-isbn-9780544334519","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}