The Tribe

Synopsis

The Tribe is the epic tale of a family and its history and a family in history.

The Carraches are a powerful Sephardic dynasty in the cosmopolitan city of Salonica during the dying days of the Ottoman Empire. After the Greek annexation of the city, they settle in France until, in 1940, the Nazi Occupation sends some into hiding, some into flight and others into camps. In the early 1960s, the survivors and their children confront the family’s past, with long hidden secrets uncovered and deep-seated conflicts exposed, even as the Eichmann trial forces the world at large to confront the full enormity of the Holocaust.

The Tribe crosses cultures and continents in its exploration of family, race, nation and empire. As the central characters journey from adolescence through early adulthood to late middle age, they experience first loves, political and sexual awakenings, artistic triumphs, religious pressures, marital struggles, dynastic rivalries, brutal persecution, resilience and liberation, before, helped by their children, they finally achieve a degree of reconciliation both with one another and the city of their birth.

Praise for Previous Work

‘Arditti is a master storyteller.’ —Observer

‘Arditti succeeds in creating fiction that is morally serious, moving and intense.’ —Times Literary Supplement

‘Anyone who is afraid that the English novel is sliding into a backwater of domestic anecdote should find their anxieties assuaged by the writing of Michael Arditti.’ —The Times

‘Thank God (maybe literally) for writers like Michael Arditti, whose invigorating novels dare to shake us out of our complacency.’ —The Spectator

‘Michael Arditti is a writer who takes risks. His material is always compelling and provocative, his techniques sophisticated and oblique.’ —Patricia Duncker, Independent on Sunday

‘Arditti writes exactly like Dickens. He demands participation from the reader in an era of detachment.’ —Scotland on Sunday

‘Michael Arditti has long been one of our bravest novelists.’ —The Tablet