Product Description

Ammine, a surgeon in a Jerusalem hospital, struggles to cope with the mangled bodies of victims of a suicide bombing in a downtown Jerusalem pizza restaurant. He is harassed, well-meaning, utterly dedicated and professional - and a naturalised Israeli Arab. When the police pin responsibility of the suicide attack on Ammine's wife, he is at first baffled, disbelieving and angry. But his feelings turn to confusion and sorrow when he discovers his wife was indeed behind the attack, as he travels to Nazareth and Gaza, attempting to discover who could have convinced his wife to do such a thing, and why she might have done so. His life, he discovers, is a lie: not only the lie told to him for several years by his wife - a naturalised Arab who slowly became political - but also the lie he has been telling himself, that his place as an Arab in Israeli society is normal: that the intifada is an abberation, that he - educated, civilised, cosmopolitan, with a beautiful house and Jewish friends who come to dinner - is the future of Arabs in Israel. The result is an inexorable tragedy, the destruction of a good man who does not understand and does not wish to understand the struggles beneath the surface of his life. He is a healer, and believes this absolves him from any involvement in the surrounding 'struggle'; but he learns that to remain neutral is death. The novel offers no solutions: it ends, as it also began, with the Israeli helicopter bombing of a Gaza village to which the doctor has come in his final understanding of his wife's choices. Ammine dies in the attack - which he may have brought upon himself and the other villagers by his high-profile search for 'truth'. Khadra writes with an urgency and an inevitability which is both terrifying and exciting, and this glimpse into an ordinary world split asunder is compelling, often beautifully written and compulsively readable.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #24812 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

From the Publisher
A strikingly powerful novel exploring the motivations of a suicide bomber in Israel, told through the eyes of her husband. By the IMPAC shortlisted author of The Swallows of Kabul ('A writer who can understand man wherever he is' New York Times).

From the Inside Flap
Dr. Amin Jaafie, an Israeli Arab, is a surgeon at a
hospital in Tel Aviv. Dedicated to his work, respected and admired by his colleagues and community, he represents integration
at its most successful. He has learned to live with the violence and chaos that plague his city, and on the night of a deadly bombing in a local restaurant, he works tirelessly to help the shocked and shattered patients brought to
the emergency room. But this night of turmoil and death takes a horrifyingly personal turn. His wife’s body is found among the dead, with massive injuries, the police coldly announce,
typical of those found on the bodies of fundamentalist suicide bombers. As evidence mounts that his wife, Sihem, was responsible for the catastrophic bombing, Dr. Jaafie is torn between cherished memories of their years together and the inescapable realization that the beautiful, intelligent, thoroughly modern woman he loved had a life far removed from their comfortable, assimilated existence together.

From the graphic, shocking description of the
bombing that opens the novel to its searing conclusion, The Attack portrays the reality of terrorism and its incalculable spiritual costs. Intense and humane, devoid of political
bias, hatred, and polemic, intensely thoughtful, sensitive and felt, it displays a profound understanding of what can seem impossible to understand.

From the Back Cover
Praise for Yasmina Khadra:
‘A writer who can understand man wherever he is’ New York Times

The Swallows of Kabul
'[Khadra's] intense, elegant, despairing prose is very much in the tradition of Camus... Deeply affecting... Any walls the reader may have built between "them" and "us" come crumbling down.' Guardian

‘Vivid… Inspiring… It reads with biblical force - like Jeremiah lamenting the destruction of Jerusalem.' Daily Telegraph

‘[Khadra’s] ability to take his readers deep in the souls of those struggling to live under such a regime makes for a disturbing but irresistible story.' Glasgow Herald

'This…agonized yet at the same time transcendently harmonious and compassionate work challenges the idea that an ordinary soul can survive all God cares to throw at it in the way of adversity.' TLS

‘[Khadra] writes as a kind of village sage, a war veteran whose tales compel passers-by to stop and listen… [He] belongs in the ranks of those writers – J M Coetzee, for example – who make violence into art… He has held onto his conscience and made beautiful; art of the terror he knew first-hand.’ New York Times

'Disturbing and mesmerizing... Will stay with you long after you've finished it.' San Francisco Chronicle
'It is the journey into the beaten souls of Khadra's characters that makes this book so affecting. Few writers have so powerfully conveyed what it feels like to live in a totalitarian society... This book is a masterpiece.' Newsweek