The Lion Seeker, by Kenneth Bonert
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The Lion Seeker, by Kenneth Bonert
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“A taut, visceral account of a young Jewish boy’s African life . . . offering at times page-turning thrills and at others a painful meditation on destiny and volition.” — NPR, All Things Considered A powerful family saga, The Lion Seeker is a thrilling ride through the life of Isaac Helger, from redheaded hooligan on the streets of Johannesburg to striving young man on the make. Growing up in the shadow of World War II, Isaac is caught between his mother’s urgent ambition to bring her sisters to safety out of the old world and his own desire for the freedoms of the new. But soon his mother’s carefully guarded secret takes them to the diamond mines, where mysteries are unveiled in the desert rocks and Isaac begins to learn the bittersweet reality of success bought at truly any cost. “[A] master storyteller . . . Bonert’s zest for description, his attention to social nuances, and his eagerness to tell a large story in a large way . . . [creates] a big, richly detailed novel.” — Tablet Magazine “Raw and ambitious.” — Moment “Astonishingly mature, admirably incautious . . . It’s visually and thematically sweeping, rich with diverse personalities, packed with tender waves and roiling crests of love, loss, hope, hatred.” — National Post (Canada) “Stunning.” — Jewish Daily Forward “Powerful and thoroughly engrossing . . . To read it is to be reminded how great a great novel can be.” — David Bezmozgis, author of The Free World
The Lion Seeker, by Kenneth Bonert- Amazon Sales Rank: #413032 in eBooks
- Published on: 2013-10-15
- Released on: 2013-10-15
- Format: Kindle eBook
From Booklist Rooted in Bonert’s personal experience growing up in a Lithuanian Jewish immigrant family in South Africa before WWII, this novel will grab readers everywhere with the story of the struggling refugees in a new country, the horror they escaped from, and the guilt about those left behind, with secrets not revealed until the very end. Isaac turns 20 in 1938, starts work as an apprentice panel-beater (auto-body restorer) in Johannesburg (though he would like to get rich quick) and has a hidden relationship with a gentile girl. Always, his parents are haunted by the anti-Semitic pogroms they escaped, and then, with the news of the Nazi massacres, Isaac tries to help his mother collect money to bring her sisters to safety. But who is stealing the money? Why won’t his rich uncle help? In a narrative laced with Yiddish idiom, the immigrant family struggle comes across as universal, whether concerning radicals or the ultra-Orthodox, and so is the blindness to those oppressed in the new country (in Africa, a Jew is a White man). A great choice for book-group discussion. --Hazel Rochman
Review
"What a rare and splendid achievement this novel is—emotionally gripping, intellectually challenging, deftly plotted, skillfully composed, and vibrantly alive with the images and sounds and textures and human flurry of another time and place. I was dazzled. And I was moved."—Tim O’Brien"[Isaac's] is a story of fighting and deciding what's worth fighting for, of cultivating a strength that doesn't erase empathy. . . The pages turn quickly, with suspenseful prose and colorful vernacular dialogue that could easily be used in a blockbuster film."—Publishers Weekly"[The Lion Seeker] will grab readers everywhere with the story of the struggling refugees in a new country, the horror they escaped from, and the guilt about those left behind, with secrets not revealed until the very end. . . The immigrant family struggle comes across as universal, whether concerning radicals or the ultra-Orthodox. . . A great choice for book-group discussion."—Booklist"South African-born Canadian writer Bonert serves up a latter-day Exodus in this debut novel."—Kirkus Reviews"Kenneth Bonert’s raw and ambitious novel of working-class Jewish life in South Africa in the 1930s and 40s...[an] ambitious and unruly novel."—Moment Magazine
"Here is the South African novel I've been waiting for. Kenneth Bonert tells it true, not safe. His protagonist is worthy of Isaac Bashevis Singer, and the South Africa he gives us vivid, raw, dangerous, shot through with moral complexity."—Lynn Freed, author of House of Women and The Servants' Quarters"The Lion Seeker is a powerful and thoroughly engrossing novel, grand in scope, richly imagined, full of dramatic incident, and crafted in a prose that is by turns roughhewn and lyrical. To read it is to be reminded how great a great novel can be."—David Bezmozgis, author of The Free World and Natasha: And Other Stories"A remarkably assured debut, The Lion Seeker is a riveting, lyrical, and profound journey towards the intersection of private lives and public destinies. Kenneth Bonert has all the makings of a major novelist."—Charles Foran, author of Mordecai: The Life and Times"The Lion Seeker is no-holds-barred, bare-knuckle-fight raw. A historical novel that feels desperately current; a Rosenburg and Juliet love story shorn of all sentiment; a stock-taking of human brutality and its flip side, our capacity to reach beyond our limitations and be better, all rendered in prose so expert, so fine honed that it belies the adjective ‘debut.’ It joins classics like J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace and Rian Malan’s My Traitor’s Heart in the canon, and renders the South African experience universal. A first-round knock-out for Kenneth Bonert."—Richard Poplak, author of Ja No Man: Growing Up White in Apartheid-Era South Africa
"This powerful novel begins with a mystery that propels its characters through their difficult lives in prewar South Africa and haunts their actions until a dramatic and searing climax based on the Holocaust in Lithuania. The Lion Seeker is vivid and illuminating, astonishing in its range and toughness, and simultaneously an expression of love and regret for all that has been lost."—Antanas Sileika, author of Underground and Woman in Bronze and Director of the Humber School for WritersPraise from abroad for The Lion Seeker:"An emotional tour de force that plumbs the depths of human hope, fear, guilt, and rage, and bears all the hallmarks of a masterwork."—Ballast (Canada)"A titanic novel. . . An epic, a vast story about a rarefied subject: the community of Ashkenazi Jews who emigrated to South Africa before World War II. . . Mazel tov, Kenneth Bonert, you have written a blockbuster of a book."—Toronto Star (Canada)"Bonert's prose is sharp and masterful, clipping along at a breathless pace while still managing to wow us with imagery, clever turns of phrase and believable dialogue peppered with several languages."—Globe and Mail (Canada)"The Lion Seeker is astonishingly mature, admirably incautious. It moves with the sleight-of-hand of the born artist, ramping up for naked tugs at the heart. . . It's visually and thematically sweeping, rich with diverse personalities, packed with tender waves and roiling crests of love, loss, hope, hatred. It casts its bit players (even a final-act dog) as deftly as its stars. . . This novel, quite apart from what it might become, remains completely and thrillingly itself."—National Post (Canada)"If not for the setting-South Africa in the 1930s and '40s-the novel's hapless protagonist could have been plucked from the doom-laden pages of Thomas Hardy. . . The Lion Seeker, like its 19th-century literary forebears, is larded with enough plot twists, reversals of fortune, and revelations of family secrets to keep many readers engrossed."—Quill & Quire (Canada)
From the Inside Flap
"Astonishingly mature, admirably incautious. It moves with the sleight-of-hand of the born artist, ramping up for naked tugs at the heart . . . It’s visually and thematically sweeping, rich with diverse personalities, packed with tender waves and roiling crests of love, loss, hope, hatred."— National Post (Canada) Are you a stupid or a clever? Such is the refrain in Isaac Helger’s mind as he makes his way from redheaded hooligan to searching adolescent to striving young man on the make. His mother’s question haunts every choice. Are you a stupid or a clever? Will you find a way to lift your family out of Johannesburg’s poor inner city, to buy a house in the suburbs, to bring your aunts and cousins from Lithuania? Isaac’s mother is a strong woman and a scarred woman; her maimed face taunts him with a past no one will discuss. As World War II approaches, then falls upon them, they hurtle toward a catastrophic reckoning. Isaac must make decisions that, at first, only seem to be life-or-death, then actually are.Meanwhile, South Africa’s history, bound up with Europe’s but inflected with its own accents—Afrikaans, Zulu, Yiddish, English—begins to unravel. Isaac’s vibrant, working-class, Jewish neighborhood lies near the African slums; under cover of night, the slums are razed, the residents forced off to townships. Isaac’s fortune-seeking takes him to the privileged seclusion of the Johannesburg suburbs, where he will court forbidden love. It partners him with the unlucky, unsinkable Hugo Bleznick, selling miracle products to suspicious farmers. And it leads him into a feud with a grayshirt Afrikaaner who insidiously undermines him in the auto shop, where Isaac has found the only work that ever felt true. And then his mother’s secret, long carefully guarded, takes them to the diamond mines, where everything is covered in a thin, metallic dust, where lions wait among desert rocks, and where Isaac will begin to learn the bittersweet reality of success bought at truly any cost.A thrilling ride through the life of one fumbling young hero, The Lion Seeker is a glorious reinvention of the classic family and coming-of-age sagas. We are caught — hearts open and wrecked — between the urgent ambitions of a mother who knows what it takes to survive and a son straining against the responsibilities of the old world, even as he is endowed with the freedoms of the new.
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Most helpful customer reviews
31 of 33 people found the following review helpful. Talented Writer, But Not Suited To My Taste. By Someone Else I could not warm up to this book, despite Kenneth Bonert's obvious writing ability. I don't necessarily need to like the characters in order to enjoy a novel, but I do need to find them interesting enough that I care about what happens to them as the story progresses. That didn't happen for me with The Lion Seeker. I couldn't care about Isaac Helger and his repeatedly bad choices that make him appear to be bent on ruining every chance he gets. I couldn't care about Gitelle, Isaac's irritating nag of a mother who appears to be one of "the stupids" herself. And I couldn't care about Abel, Isaac's milquetoast of a father, who seems to have almost no personality.I did, however, find it interesting to learn of the Lithuanian Jews who emigrated to South Africa in the early 20th century, and of the attitudes toward them in their adopted country.Two things I would have liked to have known before requesting this book:1) It is written in the present tense.2) There are no quotation marks used for dialogue.I have seen a lot of glowing reviews for this book, so this is probably just one of those times when the plot and narrative style were not a good match for me.
27 of 29 people found the following review helpful. Immigrant Saga By Ken C. Haves and Have Nots. Blacks and Whites. Stupids and Clevers. The world can, and often is, looked at through such strict dichotomies, and that's what our protagonist, Isaac Helger, is taught at a young age by his ambitious-isn't-the-word-for-it mother. In fact, she's all about helping the lad to make a buck (read: develop into a "Clever") during the Depression, by hook or (preferably) crook. And while Dad takes the standard line about seeing school through (even though Isaac hates it), Mom supports dropping out so she can guide him with maternal guile through the business world.Starting in the 30s, this saga of a Lithuanian Jewish family that emigrated to South Africa takes us all the way up to WWII. Buckle up, in other words, you're in for a long ride. That'd be a 561-page ride, in fact. Too much? I think so, but realize that other readers give "sagas" a free pass when it comes to word counts. Instead of poetic license, call it Dickensian license.One thing that threw me but might not bother other readers is the use of dialect. Author Bonert chooses to have characters talk like they sound. Thus you get lines like, "Oh medem is not so good, business time. My husband he put so bad now also. Who is? Your boy?" Add to this the heavy use of Yiddish words and you have a sense of realism that might satisfy one reader and distract another. I would be among the distracted.That said, despite a laborious start, Bonert manages some momentum with the narrative and has a strong hand on the characterization. If long books telling tales stretched across many years peppered with dialect and foreign languages do not intimidate, readers will find some gold in THE LION SEEKER as I did.
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful. "Are you a stupid or a clever?" By Jill Meyer Kenneth Bonert's new novel, "The Lion Seeker", will garner Amazon reviews that'll run the gamut between 5 star and 1 star. And all the reviewers will have the right reasons for either being repelled by the book, or as in my case, finding it brilliantly written."The Lion Seeker" tells the story of the Jewish Helger family - parents and two children - who were fortunate to flee from Lithuania in the 1920's to South Africa. The father - Abel - had emigrated first and then sent for his wife - Gitelle - and his children, Rively and Isaac. Their village in Lithuania - Dusat - had been the scene of many pogroms and Gitelle had been seriously injured in one in the early 1900's. Gitelle, or "Mame" as her children called her, was able to get plastic surgery on her damaged face, enabling her to discard the veil she had worn since she had been badly injured.Bonert makes Isaac Helger the main character in the book, but around him revolve a large cast of secondary characters. Life in Johannesburg in the 1930's and 1940's for Jewish immigrants was hard; getting a start in business and making a life for themselves in the repressive society of South Africa was often very difficult. But at least the Jews of South Africa were considered "white" and were much better off than the "colored" and the "blacks" in society. Bonert makes no bones about the disadvantaged "blacks"; often condemned to life-long poverty, living in their own bleak "sections". But if the blacks are at the bottom of society, then the English and Dutch who have gotten wealthy off the work of others, rest at the top. Their coin has made their lives - hidden away behind gates in large houses in well-protected enclaves - one of ease and acceptance. In Bonert's only example of cliched writing, he gives Isaac - the young, poor Jewish man - a hopeless romance with Yvonne - the young Protestant well-born woman. Pu-leeze...But the rest of the book is free from cliched plots and characters. Isaac, the poor boy-on-the-make, is helped along in his money-making schemes by his mother. She is desperate to bring her five younger sisters and their families from Lithuania to safety in South Africa as the 1930's and the increasing scare from Nazi Germany turns into the Holocaust in Europe in the '40's and millions are murdered. As Isaac makes his way in the world of Johannesburg, Mame asks him, "are you a stupid or a clever?" Clearly, being a "clever" is the way to be. And IS Isaac a "clever"? Mostly...Kenneth Bonert's book is very violent. But the story he tells of a young man - and his family - making their way in the relative safety of South Africa, has violent aspects that cannot be colored or made pretty. And life in a Lithuanian village in the 1900's and later is also wracked by the physical destruction that we can barely stand reading about. But along with violence, the story is also about love and betrayal. Often "love" and "betrayal" are hopelessly intertwined as Isaac grows up."The Lion Seeker" is not for the faint-of-heart. Make sure you read all the reviews before buying this book. It's long and some reviewers have commented on the dialect being difficult to follow - I didn't find it so - and the lack of "quotation marks" for the dialog. Again, I felt it was marked well enough to read and wasn't troubled by the "dashes" which indicated the dialog. I thought it was a brilliant masterpiece of a young man and his troubled world.
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