David Bezmozgis was born in Riga, Latvia, in 1973 and moved to Toronto with his parents seven years later. He is the author of a novel, The Free World, and Natasha and Other Stories, which was shortlisted for the Guardian first book award; its title story is currently being filmed. In 2010, Bezmozgis was selected as one of the New Yorker's "20 under 40" most promising fiction writers.

The Betrayers is set in the Crimea and concerns an Israeli politician, Baruch Kotler, who has been blackmailed after going against his government in a vote on the settlements. You could hardly have selected two places that are so much in the news. Do you feel trepidatious about that?
No, I think anybody who understands the nature of how quickly the world moves understands that a novel can't be completely up to date in that news-cycle way. But I think fundamentally the situation the novel describes – what's happening in Ukraine, the frictions between Russians and Tatars, and ethnic Russians and Jews – now we see it played out in a far more overt way. And as far as what's happening in Israel and Palestine, again I don't think fundamentally anything has changed; what we're seeing is yet another chapter in a very long chronicle.

Kotler is a former Soviet dissident who spent years in the gulag before coming to Israel. How did you start to imagine him?
He's based on Anatoly Sharansky, who was in the Israeli government. I came across a footnote about how this man had been betrayed by someone within the movement. And though I'd heard of Sharansky, I hadn't heard of the man who'd betrayed him, and I became very curious about what would happen to such a man, who is Tankilevich in this book.

In your version, he ends up in the Crimea where, by extraordinary coincidence, he and Kotler meet.
When I came across the story, the Soviet Union had collapsed, and I did wonder what it would be like for somebody to betray his own people for a country that ceases to exist, and what his life would be like afterwards. And that led to the central question for me: why does one man stand firmly by his principles whereas another makes a compromise?

What are Kotler's principles?
He's a true dissident, meaning that he never subscribes to any camp. So on the one hand, he's allied to a government that seems to be pro-settler but then reverses itself, and he doesn't reverse himself but not for the reasons that you would think.

Why is that?
He feels it's ultimately bad for his people, and he has the strength of character and clarity of his convictions to know the difference.

His motivation is more complex?
He knows what he believes is right and wrong, and for him in part that's not just a strictly personal thing, it's a nationalist thing; he understands himself as part of a nation, part of a people, and what he does, he does not do simply for the sake of his own skin, but for the sake of his people.

The book reprises some of the themes of your two previous ones, but it's also very different. What were you aiming for?
There was something else I wanted to try in this book that I hadn't in my two previous ones. The previous books had been about ordinary – one could say anonymous – people who were prey to the larger forces of history, politics and ideology. Most people fall into this category. For The Betrayers I wanted to write about the sort person who isn't anonymous, who has a hand in actually shaping history. To write about someone like that seemed like a new challenge with higher dramatic stakes. And since this person was an Israeli politician, it raised the stakes even further – not only because Israel is a provocative subject for many people – but because in Israel, unlike in Canada, the US or the UK, politicians typically cannot assume some controversial position without also feeling the consequences of this in their personal lives. In this case, Kotler's stance on the settlement withdrawal directly affects his son who is serving in the army. In Canada or the US such a plot line would feel contrived because most politicians do not send their own but other people's children into battle. That isn't the case in Israel – and other countries where conscription exists – and so the connection between the personal and the political is less abstract. For a novel about moral choices and their mortal consequences, this felt right.

You've mentioned that the situation is Gaza is another chapter in a long story. How do you think it can move on?
I think the real issue is these two peoples either can or cannot co-exist, and this is another instance, another battle. But in the grand scheme, there has to be a political solution and I think that's the only solution. I don't think there's a military solution. And reasonable people have been speaking of political solution for a long time, and that's really the only thing that can happen. So what we see right now is again only a military engagement, but it doesn't mean anything other than just being horrific and terribly sad, and I think rather pointless. Because if there is a solution it's political and not military, and so it seems like a terrible waste of life.

Kotler goes back to the Crimea because he holidayed there as a child. You visited in 2011, but things have changed dramatically since then.
The pattern in the former Soviet Union, Ukraine, was a pattern of stasis, and it was a tremendous shock and a surprise that this stasis was broken. Having said that, what attracted me to Crimea and Ukraine was the fact that there was this ferment under the surface, that there was this tremendous disaffection, that this was a country that was broken, and how was it that people were continuing to live there.

Crimea was once considered as a site for an autonomous Jewish republic; in the book, you picture Tankilevich's synagogue as dwindling to unviable levels.
This long millennial history of the European Jewry is pretty much coming to an end, especially when you compare it against what it used to be, so you see that represented by Tankilevich and by the people in Simferopol. To me as somebody who comes from there, it was a way of thinking about where I've come from and where we're going, what is the past and what is the future.

You've lived in Canada since you were six. How does it feel to write about these places from such a distance?
Every writer will say, in any instance, am I entitled, do I grant myself permission, to write anything about anybody outside of myself. But I was born in the former Soviet Union, I was brought up very much steeped in the mentality and in an immigrant community, and have been connected to, we can call it Russia or the former Soviet Union, and thinking about it and learning about it on my own, to feel like I have the authority to write about it. That's always the question we ask. Do I have enough authority to write about it?And the same would go for Israel. As a Jew, and as one who feels a connection to Israel, as one who feels a connection to my history and my people, it seemed to me, what else am I going to write about?

The Betrayers is published by Viking on 28 August (£12.99). Click here to buy it for £10.39 with free UK p&p. David Bezmozgis will appear at the Edinburgh international book festival with Young-ha Kim on 22 August