A review by pauldaly
A Man Lies Dreaming by Lavie Tidhar

4.0

A noir fantasy, an alternative history, a dark thought experiment, but most of all this is literary bomb throwing of the highest order, designed to shift people out of their comfort zones. If you can deal with Hitler as Phillip Marlowe, Auchwitz as a dark magical realist Catskills resort, and some truly anything-but-erotic s&m episodes, then have at it. They are just some of the clues to why this novel was greeted with almost equal parts praise and revulsion. For my part, they are not mutually exclusive- admiration for a truly fine piece of invention which for all of its novel ways of looking at the Fascist 1930s never lets us forget the actual history reads like some fantastical magical realist horror story.