Shortlisted for the 2023 Bernstein Prize for fiction

In his younger days, Adam Ben Coleman served as an officer on a ship that transported sheep and calves to slaughter. Now it’s 2061 and Coleman is sitting in a jail cell awaiting trial for his part in the “live transport” industry, now outlawed.

While he fights to prove his innocence, Coleman is forced to examine his past – his relationship with his parents, and with Jane, the ship's veterinarian — with courage and clarity, as he seeks to understand what pushed him towards evil now that he must justify his actions to the world, and to himself.

What happens in a world of shifting values, when society decides to prosecute acts that were once the norm of human life? Does the principle of human equality apply also to animals? Can we achieve true atonement, or will Coleman’s trial only debase the ideal of justice?

Reviews:

"MOBY DICK meets MOTHER NIGHT. Elad Zeret takes his readers on a wild voyage between the waves of selective memory. A journey that, at its end, will find readers soaked, guilty and a bit wiser.” —Etgar Keret

“It is impossible to stop reading this disturbing novel by Elad Zeret, who is a multi-talented narrator. The splitting of the plot into two different dates, 2061 (the trial) and 2016 (the act), is brilliant. Only from the distance of a world, imaginary but possible, that has decided to outlaw animal abuse, are we free to take account, analyze and understand where we went wrong." —Agi Mishol, Haaretz