The Ambassadors

by George Lerner

Overview

An eye-opening account of the Rwandan civil war and an achingly tender portrait of a family at odds. Embedded in real events, the novel takes us on an unforgettable journey through the Congo, Germany, and Brooklyn as it examines one family’s passage through genocide and grief. Jacob Furman has always chosen his call to duty over his wife, Susanna, and their son, Shalom. When he’s deployed to the Congo as a Mossad operative to help the Tutsis in their fight against the Hutus, Susanna and Shalom are left once again to contemplate his absence. Susanna, a Holocaust survivor and an esteemed linguistics scholar, buries herself in work as she searches for the biological roots of human language, while Shalom, overwhelmed by the accomplishments of his parents, struggles in search of his identity.After years apart, a fragile reunion borne out of illness sparks a sense of family they never had before, connecting the three to a web of emotion not just to one another, but to the political events that have defined our century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781605987071
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	09/15/2014
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
File size:	606 KB

About the Author

George Lerner is a producer for CNN and PBS and has traveled throughout Africa and has reported on some of the most landmark moments in African history, including South Sudan's Independence Day, the Democratic Republic of Congo's elections, and an interview with Zimbabwe's President Mugabe, which was nominated for an Emmy. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Editorial Reviews

An amazing and impressive debut. A riveting read from beginning to end and one of those all too infrequent novels that linger in the mind long after they are finished. Very highly recommended for both personal reading lists and community library General Fiction collections.

The Midwest Book Review

Perceptively, generously, Lerner's exact and exacting first novel reminds us that saving the world must always start at home, around ourown hearths, with our own loved ones. Without that, we are surely lost. With it, we may be saved.

Karen Shepard

In this bold and unexpectedly tender novel, George Lerner chronicles both our darkest times and our most hopeful.  With the documentary eye of a journalist, he marches us across the unspeakably cruel killing fields of the twentieth century, and with the heart of a novelist, he explores the redemptive power of forgiveness and love.

Gary Schanbacher

George Lerner is a fearless writer, unflinching in his rendering of the world's worst atrocities and tender as he documents the impact of war. And even with its huge historical and geographical range, The Ambassadors still manages to take us deep in to the complex lives of its characters.

Joanna Scott

It is easy to be awed by the The Ambassadors: by its terra incognita reach, by its sly tradecraft, by its plumb lines stretching from Brooklyn to Germany to Congo, from the buried stories of early man to the muted truths of a modern family. Like the Holbein painting from which it takes its title, this novel yields ceaseless marvels, and its author, George Lerner, is a cartographer making paths where before there was darkness.

Elizabeth Eslami

With a documentarian's depth of field and a novelist's perspicacity, George Lerner expertly and poignantly illuminates the trials of nations and the trails of the heart—and the ways to which they intersect—in this deeply gratifying, deeply resonant novel.

Charles Blackstone

2014-08-25
A father fights genocide on the world stage while neglecting the domestic front. Lerner's debut novel has a nonlinear structure: It jumps around in time, from the years immediately following World War II, to the 1960s, '70s and late '90s. Three narrators alternate: Jacob, an American-born Jew who was part of the Allied liberation force in Europe; his now-estranged wife, Susanna, a renowned anthropologist who has recently been diagnosed with malignant melanoma; and their son, Shalom, who, much to Susanna's disappointment, foreswore anthropology to manage rock bands. After Germany's surrender, Jacob is forever marked by what he has learned of Nazi crimes and by his failure to protect an Auschwitz survivor, Judith. His motto becomes "Never again" as he dedicates himself to the creation of the Jewish homeland in Israel and, whenever summoned by a mysterious operative named Salik, goes off on secret missions to help populations threatened by genocide. At a Hannah Arendt lecture, he meets Susanna, whose entire family perished in the Shoah. (She escaped Poland aboard a Kindertransport plane). Susanna has become disenchanted with her husband's frequent and unpredictable absences, and the decisive rupture occurs when his efforts on behalf of Homo sapiens interfere with her search for fossilized hominids. (On his rare returns, Jacob is not far away: He has been banished only to the basement of Susanna's Brooklyn brownstone.) When Shalom—whose comparatively trivial pursuits (promoting an African salsa band, clubbing and dating another failed anthropologist) hardly justify his status as a third narrator—informs him of Susanna's illness, Jacob deploys his considerable martial skills against an enemy that just may be invincible. Only one of Jacob's missions (in the immediate aftermath of the Rwandan massacres) is described in any detail, and even then his role seems peripheral and nebulous—the most riveting drama plays out much closer to home. This novel has good bones obscured by too much flab.

Kirkus Reviews