I Pity the Poor Immigrant A Novel [Paperback]

Lazar knows how to paint the brief vivid picture, and draws the reader into a beguiling air of lost connections.... -James Wood,The New Yorker

In 1972, American gangster Meyer Lansky petitions the Israeli government for citizenship. His request is denied, and he is returned to the U.S. to stand trial. He leaves behind a mistress in Tel Aviv, a Holocaust survivor named Gila Konig.

In 2009, American journalist Hannah Groff travels to Israel to investigate the killing of an Israeli writer. She soon begins to connect the dots between Lansky, Gila, the murdered writer, and her own father, finding herself inside a web of violence that takes in the American and Israeli Mafias, the biblical figure of King David, and the modern state of Israel. Part crime story, part spiritual quest, I PITY THE POOR IMMIGRANT is a novel that does the work of a hundred history books. *

*Joshua Ferris

Zachary Lazar's previous novel,Sway(LB, 978-0-316-11309-0, 1/08), was chosen as a Best Book of 2008 by theLos Angeles Times,and his memoir,Evening's Empire: TheStory of My Father's Murder(LB, 978-0-316-03768-6, 11/09),was named a Best Book of 2009 in theChicago Tribune.Lazar is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University. He lives in New Orleans, where he is on the creative writing faculty at Tulane University.ANew York TimesNotable Book of 2014 Lazar concocts a beautifully written hybrid text of remembrance, essay, speculation, and poetic prose.... Unforgettable. --Tom Nolan,Wall Street Journal I Pity the Poor Immigrant...offers confident testimony that the novel, even in the age of memoir, has its own irreplaceable role. --Adam Kirsch,Tablet Magazine Lazar is a master of combining disparate stories into one compll3