The Attack

This book is the tale of an Arab surgeon, living in Israel, who has to come to terms with his wife's past after he first learns of her death in an attack and later learns that she was the suicide bomber. The book is artfully crafted, slowly peeling back the layers without directly hiding what is to come. You see from the start the distrust he faces as a Palestinian in an Israeli world, but in the beginning he is living a prosperous and relatively respected existience. It is only over the course of the book -- as he visits family in smaller towns, listens to the rantings of a radical imam, and finally sees the destruction evident in his hometown in Palestine -- that you come to learn as he learns the factors pushing young men and women show more into martyrdom.

My first reaction to some of the scenes was to feel the writing was too overwrought. But how can you write a first person account of a bombing without such feeling? Isn't "overwrought" exactly the right way to write it? I came to accept the prose style and enjoyed the journey I was taken on. The author (Mohammed Moulessehoul using the female nom de plume Yasmina Khadra) very deliberately uses such language, deliberately chooses as his martyr not only a woman, but a relatively wealthy and secure woman, in order to shock the reader the most. But it is an effective method.

I think perhaps movies such as the Palestinian Paradise Now are more adept at addressing this issue than The Attack. Nonetheless, I was happy to read an account which attempted to explain but not excuse suicide bombing. Our protagonist, crafted in such a way as to hold many of the same views as the average Western reader, cannot actually imagine coming to his wife's decision, but the book elegantly walks one through the culture that produces such martyrs.

I'd recommend this to anyone interested in the issue. It's not a great novel in its own right, but it is certainly a good one and very topical. show less

Amin Jaafari is a hard-working and successful surgeon at a busy Tel Aviv hospital. Two generations away from his Bedouin origins, he is wealthy, popular with his Jewish colleagues, and devoted to his wife Sihem. Thus it comes as an enormous shock when his thoroughly Westernized wife, Sihem, blows herself up in a local restaurant, killing herself along with a number of men, women and children. Jaafari is devastated. The structure of his life, built on ambition, talent and resistance to prejudice, collapses around him. Everything he has ever done is up for interrogation, from his own marriage, friendships and professional status to his religious, national and political affiliations.

By turns angry, mournful and perplexed, Jaafari staggers show more from indignity to indignity. The doctor's sense of futility eventually gives in to outrage, once he visits places like Jenin, the battle-scorched site of a large Palestinian refugee camp and where he finally finds an answer to his question about Sihem.

The novel is at its best when the reader rides along with Jaafari as he explores the twists and turns of his convoluted identity and and his descent into a type of madness. He's such a fascinating and credible character and I won't forget him anytime soon. show less

Translated from the original French, the book is written in the first person. It follows a successful Israeli-Arab doctor living in Tel Aviv. He is wealthy, moves in the highest social circles, secular and deeply assimilated in Israeli society and deeply in love with his wife. His life falls apart however when he learns that his wife has been killed in a suicide bombing in a cafe in Tel Aviv... and apparently she was the bomber. What follows is his struggle to come to terms with both his own guilt at obviously not having given his wife enough of a reason to keep on living, as well as his sense of betrayal. He goes on a personal quest to try and learn why she would commit such an atrocity.

Some reviewers have criticized the book for not show more discussing in depth the roots of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Others feel that nothing very revelatory happens or the story does not provide shocking twists and turns along the way. I feel these criticisms are somewhat beside the point. The story is primarily about the protagonist's mental and emotional journey in moving out of his own individual narrative to discovering those of people around him who does not understand or empathize with. And if we wish that the journey, particularly towards the end had more show than tell (some of the major conversations have an element of sock puppetry about them), it is still a powerful and engaging story.

I'm looking forward to reading more by this author. show less

Kann man sich etwas Entsetzlicheres vorstellen? Der geliebte Mensch, den man sicher zu Hause wähnte, wird bei einem Bombenatttentat in Stück gerissen. Und als ob dies nicht schlimm genug wäre, erfährt Amin Jaafari, ein hoch angesehener Arzt und arabischer Israeli, dass seine Frau die Attentäterin dieses Anschlags war. Der Mensch, den man liebt und von dem man annimmt, ihn in- und auswendig zu kennen, verrichtet ein Massaker inmitten eines Kindergeburtstags. Für und um Jaafari herum bricht alles zusammen: Seine Liebe zu seiner Frau und ihre Liebe zu ihm scheinen plötzlich nur noch Illusionen und Täuschungen gewesen zu sein. Man verdächtigt ihn der Mitwisserschaft, schlägt ihn zusammen, will ihn von seiner Arbeit verjagen - doch show more zumindest seine Freunde stehen zu ihm.
Khadra schildert dieses Grauenvolle und kaum zu Ertragende so überzeugend, dass ich immer wieder innehalten musste, weil mir im wahrsten Sinne des Wortes der Atem stockte. Dazu die Verdächtigungen der Israelis ihm gegenüber, die sich nicht vorstellen können, dass er nicht eingeweiht war - ich fühlte mit ihm, wie sich seine sicher geglaubte Welt plötzlich in Nichts auflöst.
Und weshalb nun gemischte Gefühle? Als er sich auf die Suche nach den Hintergründen zu dieser Tat macht, die auch eine Reise in seine Vergangenheit wird, geht dieses Überzeugende verloren. Seine ungezügelten Aussetzer mögen zwar erklärbar sein, doch nachvollziehbar waren sie nicht für mich. Auch dass es ihn mehr schmerzt, dass seine Frau ihn betrogen haben könnte als dass sie als Selbstmordattentäterin handelte, wirkte nicht wirklich glaubwürdig. Hinzu kommen Ungereimtheiten im Text: In Bethlehem besucht er seine Verwandten und übernachtet dort, doch als er zu seiner alten Freundin Kim zurückkehrt, war er offenbar nur einen Tag weg.
Dennoch: Ein lesenswertes Buch, das überzeugend die Entstehung der Spirale von Gewalt und Gegengewalt schildert aus einer Welt, die wir ansonsten nur aus den Nachrichten kennen. show less

The Attack by Yasmina Khadra opens in the wake of a terrorism bombing in Tel Aviv. Dr. Amin Jaafari works tirelessly on wounded patients putting the pieces together again. Tired beyond belief, he drives home and falls into bed only to be woken up and asked to return to the hospital. When he arrives he is told he needs to identify a body that they believe is his wife Sihem. It is with total shock that he identifies his wife and learns that she is believed to be the suicide bomber. Thus begins Dr. Jaafari’s nightmare as the Israeli police try to connect him to the incident. Even after he is released by the police, he is attacked and beaten by an angry mob. Through all of this Amin clings to his faith in his wife, in no way could he see show more her as a bomber especially as children died in the attack. But then he receives a letter from her that she wrote just before the incident.

After a stellar opening, this book simply did not give this story the heart or soul that it needed. The Attack is meant to show the human cost of terrorism but although I found the story interesting, it did not really touch me emotionally. I found the writing too flowery and the main character of Dr. Jaafari too remote and guarded. He speaks of the deep love he and his wife had, but I didn’t feel that coming across on the pages. He seemed more concerned with the fact that his wife may have been unfaithful to him, than that she murdered innocents.

The author did do a good job at not vilifying any one nationality but I still have no real understanding of how one can put themselves in the position of being a suicide bomber or that there could ever be any justification in the murder of innocent people in order to state a political view point. The Attack was an interesting read but I do not feel particularly enlightened by it. show less

This is a fantastic book. Amin Jaafari is an Israeli Arab, a successful Doctor, a decent and popular man, who has a beautiful house and a beautiful devoted wife, in Tel Aviv. A terrorist attack in Tel Aviv changes his life forever, when his wife's body is found among the dead. As if this wasn't enough for him to have to deal with, he is then informed that his wife is believed to have been responsible for the attack. Amin becomes obsessed with finding out the truth and his journey takes him to the darkest places and the deepest corners of his mind, causing him to think about things which he had never thought to consider, and to wonder if he really knew his wife at all.

This book is beautifully written, and the author avoids casting show more judgement or placing blame. Instead he tells the story from the viewpoint of Dr Jaafari, and the reader really feels as though they know the Dr. The ending is amazing, and this is a book that I know will stay with me and make me think for a long time. show less

Extraordinary depiction of the arab-israeli conflict from the viewpoint of a humanist, secular,successful, assimilated israeli arab surgeon whose supposedly happy well adjusted wife became a suicide bomber. After the initial shock, the surgeon traces her steps back to their families in the Palestinian areas, and by showing the tragedies, torments and deprivations of the Palestinians, he comes to understand more of why she did what she did. His relationship with his wife is greatly idealized, but the book is powerful and haunting. It is incredibly even-handed in its sympathies with the Israeli and Palestinian situations. Highly recommended.