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.
About the Author :
Michael Arditti is an acclaimed novelist, short story writer and critic. His novels are The Celibate (1993), Pagan and her Parents (1996), Easter (2000), Unity (2005), A Sea Change (2006) The Enemy of the Good (2009), Jubilate (2011), The Breath of Night (2013), Widows and Orphans (2015), Of Men and Angels (2018), The Anointed (2020), The Young Pretender (2022) and The Choice (2023). He was awarded an Honorary D Litt from the University of Chester and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Review :
A story of war, exile, emigration, secrets and marriage (happy and bad) unfolds. Michael Arditti is brilliant on the dynamic and traps of family life. The conversations, often fractious and occasionally affectionate, will be instantly recognisable to anyone with siblings. A fat, epic family saga that amply rewards the investment it will take to read it.
Michael Arditti’s impressive and immersive family saga begins in Salonica (now Thessaloniki) in 1911 and follows the fortunes of the wealthy, powerful Carrache family, who are part of the Sephardic Jewish community … Arditti proves himself to be a brilliant and sure-footed storyteller. He is able to establish place, character, politics and conflict in a few short pages.
I would also wholeheartedly recommend Michael Arditti’s The Tribe, the enthralling tale of a Sephardic dynasty in Salonica.
An epic reading experience … ambitious … fascinating.
The Tribe succeeds, and indeed triumphs, because its people feel real … No major character is a cipher, placed merely to convey an idea or detail – although it is a book full of ideas, and most marvellously rich in detail.
Arditti’s most ambitious work in years.
The three-generational family saga is a well-known genre, as is the Holocaust novel; here, Michael Arditti combines the two, and the effect is to produce a masterpiece of storytelling, and a novel of immense compassion … This wonderful book contains transcendent truths.
Arditti weaves historical circumstance into a plot that powerfully highlights the ‘long reach of the past’.
