I read another book by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Lawrence Wright, this time his latest, a thriller novel. The book is about a Palestinian-American FBI agent who partners with an Israeli detective to solve the murder of an Israeli police chief in Gaza. Wright drew from his many years of living and working in the Middle East.
The main character, Tony Malik, specializes in tracking money from drug and arms deals for the FBI. He barely survives an explosion of a bomb he was trying to disarm. His relationship and work fall apart while he recovers from brain injuries and the loss of an eye. Malik goes to Gaza to find his roots. His father immigrated to the USA and married an American woman. His father divorced his mother, and he wanted to know more about where he came from after his father’s death.
He teams up with Israeli cop Yossi Ben-Gal because Malik’s cousin is accused of the murder. While following the action and the course of the investigation, I got to know the lives of both Palestinians living in Gaza and Israelis. I can tell Wright interviewed a lot of people in his career. The story brings to life what it is like to live there. He is sympathetic to both sides in the conflict, and I appreciated his insight into the toll living in such a tense and violent environment has on people. Many people die in the course of the action, both innocent and guilty, which I guess shows the amount of violence that occurs there. The book has a lot of deeply described characters that show a different facet of the conflict. He also weaves in the actual Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
One of the Palestinian characters reflects on why Arab societies are often behind Western societies in terms of quality of life. “…look at the example of Israel to see what our own societies could be if we were liberated from these tyrannies and religious dogma that imprisons our minds.”
Wright believes that peace is possible between Israel and Palestine, but until “extremists and ideologues are pushed out of power, the conversation about moving on from the conflict will always be stillborn.”
I enjoy books that combine history with human stories. It gave me a deeper and more nuanced view of the tragedy of Israel and Palestine.
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