Dr Amin Jaafari, 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 attack in a local city 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, typical, the police coldly announce, of those found on the bodies of suicide bombers. As evidence mounts that his wife, Sihem, was responsible for the catastrophic bombing, Dr Jaafari is torn between 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.
Desperate to understand how he missed even the slightest clue, Jaafari leaves the relative security of Israel and enters the Palestinian territories to find the fanatics who recruited her. In search of the truth, he confronts a reality that he had refused to see.
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 incomprehensible.