{"product_id":"9781922253576","title":"Good People","description":"\u003cp\u003eIt’s late 1938.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThomas Heiselberg has built a career in Berlin as a market researcher for an American advertising company. \u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIn Leningrad, twenty-two-year-old Sasha Weissberg has grown up eavesdropping on the intellectual conversations in her parents’ literary salon.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThey each have grand plans for their lives. Neither of them thinks about politics too much, but after catastrophe strikes they will have no choice.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThomas puts his research skills to work elaborating Nazi propaganda. Sasha persuades herself that working as a literary editor of confessions for Stalin’s secret police is the only way to save her family. \u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eWhen destiny brings them together, they will have to face the consequences of the decisions they have made.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eNir Baram’s \u003ci\u003eGood People\u003c\/i\u003e has been showered with praise in many countries. With its acute awareness of the individual amid towering historical landscapes, it is a tour de force: sparkling, erudite, a glimpse into the abyss.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eNir Baram\u003c\/b\u003e was born into a political family in Jerusalem in 1976. His grandfather and father were both ministers in Israeli Labor Party governments. He has worked as a journalist and an editor, and as an advocate for equal rights for Palestinians. He began publishing fiction when he was twenty-two, and is the author of five novels, including \u003ci\u003eThe Remaker of Dreams\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eGood People\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eWorld Shadow\u003c\/i\u003e. His novels have been translated into more than ten languages and received critical acclaim around the world. He has been shortlisted several times for the Sapir Prize and in 2010 received the Prime Minister’s Award for Hebrew Literature. Text will publish a work of reportage by Nir Baram in 2017.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e‘Quite possibly, Dostoyevsky would write like this if he lived in Israel today.’ \u003ci\u003eFrankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e‘Written with great talent, momentum and ingenuity...it expands the borders of literature to reveal new landscapes.’ Amos Oz\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e‘One of the most intriguing writers in Israeli literature today.’ \u003ci\u003eHaaretz\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e‘\u003ci\u003eGood People\u003c\/i\u003e rewards the reader’s patience while mining a tragic sense of irony that extends all the way to its title.’ \u003ci\u003eBig Issue\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e‘Baram uses intense geographical plotting and is chillingly eloquent...[\u003ci\u003eGood People\u003c\/i\u003e] is tremendous. I read it in two sittings and I learned a lot. How does a man in his early 30s know how to write like this?’ \u003ci\u003eAustralian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e‘\u003ci\u003eGood People\u003c\/i\u003e is a richly textured panorama of German and Russian life…This ample novel lives most memorably through Baram’s vignettes of people, dwellings, cities, landscapes and the like that seem to lie, at times, at the periphery of its central concerns.’ \u003ci\u003eAge\/Sydney Morning Herald\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e‘A groundbreaker…Riveting reading.’ \u003ci\u003eQantas Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e‘\u003ci\u003eGood People\u003c\/i\u003e is the tale of ordinary, middle-class lives sucked into a moral maelstrom. It is compulsive and profoundly disturbing.’ \u003ci\u003eSunday Star Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e‘Precise and evocative, \u003ci\u003eGood People\u003c\/i\u003e is a riveting glimpse into a different place and a different time.’ \u003ci\u003eCanberra Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e‘Astonishingly powerful…[A] compelling, important story.’ \u003ci\u003eNew Zealand Listener\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e‘Chillingly captures the terrors and tensions of life under Stalin and Hitler. The chapters set in Russia are particularly effective, carrying the suspense of a spy thriller. Nir Baram explores the frightening speed and ease with which ordinary people become functionaries in totalitarian societies.’ \u003ci\u003eTLS\u003c\/i\u003e  \u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e‘\u003ci\u003eGood People\u003c\/i\u003e is a subtle, original, and fascinating take on the wartime story. We forget that the brutality was as much a bureaucratic effort as a military one. We forget that even the most massive, most evil forces are comprised of moving human parts. If \u003ci\u003eGood People\u003c\/i\u003e has a moral, it is this: the totalitarian state will attempt to possess the individual by co-opting his (relatively innocent) instincts—ambition, greed, security and love. The question at heart is if it is possible within an evil system to be good.’ \u003ci\u003eJewish Book Council\u003c\/i\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"The Text Publishing Company","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47154168004848,"sku":"9781922253576","price":9.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781922253576_p0.jpg?v=1763634116","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781922253576","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}