THE LEGEND OF BRUNO AND ADELA
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Amir Gutfreund
Fiction, 2014
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Winner of 2015 Ramat-Gan Prize for Literature
This is not a thriller. But it opens with the discovery of the body of a beautiful woman in a south Tel Aviv dump. Bizarre crime scenes, decorated with cryptic graffiti and littered with British Mandate-era weapons, begin to proliferate. Enter a brilliant police detective who likes discount coupons. To track the serial killer he is forced to work with Zoe, an audacious and literate teenager and Ra’ee, a graffiti specialist with an ambiguous sexual identity.
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To this mélange add Bruno Schultz, the Jewish author murdered in Poland by the Nazis seventy years ago, and an old man in a wheelchair who explains to his giant mindless son all he needs to know about deadly revenge.
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Amir Gutfreund assembles a unique jigsaw puzzle as he ventures into the greatest mystery of all: what the hell goes on there, at the bottom of a person's soul. Gutfreund's uncommon novel bursts with humor and an immensely talented writer’s capacity to transcend boundaries and plots – and then to hover between them. This is a wild but accessible literary flight that breaks from conventional norms and celebrates the love of literature and the art of writing.
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Rights Sold:
Israel: Kinneret Zmora Bitan; France: Gallimard; USA: Amazon Crossing (LAST BULLET CALL)
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Reviews:
“[A] brilliant and hilarious detective plot, you do not want to let go of...Gutfreund does impressive work with this novel…” – Ran Bin-Nun, Yediot Aharonot
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"A complete joy…the fruit of good writing and a good story (a rare combination). This book is a treat and it left me with one wish – for a sequel….The strength of The Legend of Bruno and Adela is … in its characters…almost all of them flawed in some way but all are captivating. I finished the book utterly in love with them." – Saloona
“The book has some wonderful moments…written in beautiful language, amusing, thought-provoking and original in the most positive sense of the word…[Gutfreund] keeps trying to break through new boundaries, to experience new genres and perhaps even invent a few of his own” – Alit Karp, Ha’aretz
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“..[T]the love of literature, the love of reading and writing, identification with the other and the desire to get closer to others, take on a violent and somber shape…." – Yoni Livne, Yediot Acharonot
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“The Legend of Bruno and Adela is a magical tunnel through which passes a fascinating procession of charming characters, spanning different periods and continents: a combination of a Tel-Aviv marginal reality with the scent of European woods before World War II…broadening the heart and pleasing.” – Simona Bat, Ynet
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