The Dictator: A Novel - Softcover

Layton, David

3.44

27 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1554686776 ISBN 13: 9781554686773

Publisher: Patrick Crean Editions, 2017

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“An expertly drawn narrative, well paced and above all intriguing in its portrayal of an odd, little known episode in the Second World War.” —National Post

The Globe and Mail calls The Dictator “suspenseful . . . layered and morally complex”

With a deft touch and a wonderful ability to show the humorous in the tragic, David Layton has written a novel that explores the relationship between fathers and sons, and the way in which events of the past translate down through the generations. The Dictator is at turns funny, poignant and insightful.

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From the Back Cover:

From the author of the Bird Factory comes a new novel about an estranged father and son forced together under the same roof—one losing his grip on reality and the other discovering a secret past that he may never fully understand.

Aaron, unhappy in middle age, must deal with the reverberations of his increasingly alienated teenaged daughter and the sudden care of his father, Karl, a man he hardly knows who is descending into dementia.

In a flashback to the 1930s, Karl escapes Nazi Europe at the behest of the eccentric and ruthless Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, who sets up a colony of Jewish refugees on the island. In a strange reversal of racist roles, Trujillo, who whitens his skin with makeup, welcomes the Jews because they are white and not like the black Haitians who have infiltrated the dictator’s country. Karl sits out the war in this unusual settlement and starts a secret family that his future Canadian family will know nothing about.

Karl is a man who has survived by reinventing himself many times over. Blustering, arrogant, he is convinced that the world is intentionally trying to confuse him, not least his good-for-nothing son. Not like his other son, the one he left behind in the Dominican. If only Karl could remember his name, and where he is, Karl would go and find him.

With a deft touch and a wonderful ability to show the humorous in the tragic, David Layton has written a novel that explores the relationship between fathers and sons, and examines how the events of the past translate down through generations. Told from the alternating perspectives of Karl and Aaron, travelling from present-day Toronto to a wartime settlement of Jewish immi-grants in the Dominican Republic, The Dictator is at turns funny, poignant and insightful.

About the Author:

Award-winning writer DAVID LAYTON has had short fiction and articles published in literary journals, newspapers and magazines including Exile, The Daily Telegraph, Cond� Nast Traveler and The Globe & Mail. He is the author of Motion Sickness, a memoir that was shortlisted for the Trillium Book Award, and the bestselling novel The Bird Factory. David Layton teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto and is the course director for Backstage IFOA, part of the Toronto International Festival of Authors program.

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