Dinner at the centre of the earth: Nathan Englander - Tapa dura

In Englander's hands, storytelling is a transformative act. Put him alongside Singer, Carver, and Munro. Englander is, quite simply, one of the very best we have

Nathan Englander's fiction [is] always animated by a deep, vibrant core of historical resonance

Nathan Englander is one of those rare writers who, like Faulkner, manages to make his seemingly obsessive, insular concerns all the more universal for their specificity

From the best-selling author of Pulitzer finalist What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, Dinner at the Centre of the Earth is a spellbinding thriller, a spy novel and a love story, showcasing Englander's gifts as never before.

Prisoner Z, held at a black site in the Negev desert for a dozen years has only his guard for company. How does a nice American Jewish boy from Long Island wind up an Israeli spy working for Mossad, and later, a traitor to his adopted country? What does it mean to be loyal, what does it mean to be a traitor, when the ideals you cherish are betrayed by the country you love?

From Israel and Gaza to Paris, Italy, and America, the story shifts back in time, providing a kaleidoscopic glimpse of Prisoner Z's improbable journey to his desert cell.

Englander's irresistible hero brings wit and heartbreak to his predicament and the plight of a damaged and riven nation.

Taut, provocative, and impossible to put down, a novel of full of shifting surfaces, where nothing and no one is what it seems, Dinner at the Centre of the Earth is the most electrifying work of Nathan Englander's extraordinary career.