The Attack (Kindle Edition)

by Yasmina Khadra (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Here the inevitability of evil and the universality of human suffering are more than novelistic themes: they are History in all its excessive reality, tackled in writing that is never less than fully engaged.”
—Le Nouvel Observateur

“The Attack, Yasmina Khadra’s best book, is an urgent, must-read.”
—Paris Match

“Khadra uses his materials with such mastery and emotional power that the reader is continuously propelled forward.”
—Le Point

“The Attack is a mournful detonation at the end of this summer. To read it is to undermine your tranquility, and you can’t tell whether the shiver that goes through you at the end is a sign of anguish or relief.”
—Le Figaro

Review

“Engrossing…audaciously conceived, courageously important [and] urgently humane, The Attack is Khadra’s best and most ambitious novel yet.”
—The Los Angeles Time

“A genuine work of art.”
—The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Gripping, dynamic. . . .Both a fierce rendering of geopolitical tensions and a plea for peace.”
—Tne New York Times

“A powerfully dark vision . . . of the [Arab-Israeli] conflict.”
—The New Yorker

“An engaging glimpse into the kinds of stories we never hear on CNN.”
—TimeOut Chicago

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 190 KB
• Print Length: 272 pages
• Publisher: Anchor (May 8, 2007)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English
• ASIN: B000QEKMU8
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #34,150 in Kindle Store (See Bestsellers in Kindle Store)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Provocative. Jarring. Important read., September 17, 2007

By	W. Capodanno (Bellevue, WA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Attack (Paperback)

This book shook me to the core. It is the story of Dr. Amin Jafaari, a well-respected and successful surgeon in a Tel Aviv hospital who also happens to be an Israeli-Arab. The book opens with a devastating suicide attack in Tel Aviv. Amin's hospital is immediately mobilized and he "goes into action" trying to save innocent victims from the terrorist attack that ultimately claims 17 lives. As Amin heads home to recover from his exhaustion, he expects to find comfort from his wife Sihem. He is surprised and puzzled to find the house empty and Sihem yet to return from a three-day visit to her relatives near Nazareth.

Amin is awakened by a phone call five hours later, still disoriented from a lack of sleep, and called back to the hospital by his detective friend, Navid with still no idea about the reality about to confront him -- Sihem is suspected of being the suicide bomber.

The book is a remarkable story about Amin's attempt to come to grips with the incomprehensibility of the situation now confronting him. Was his wife really capable of such an "evil" act? If she was, could he have been "blind" to this? How could he have not been aware of what drove her to make such a choice? Did she betray him in any other ways?

While such a personal journey could provide for compelling reading, in Khadra's hand, the broader context of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict provides an even more provocative, timely and reflective book. Khadra doesn't impose answers on the readers. What he does do is reflect remarkably vivid portrait of the fear, destruction, stereotypes and complexity of the reality facing individuals on all sides of the conflict.

This book makes you think about the reality of the situation in the multi-dimensional and complex way the situation deserves, not in the black and white, one dimensional sound bites that generally surround us. For me, the most powerful moment in the book was Amin's reflection on something his father told him when he was a child "There's nothing, absolutely nothing, more important than your life. And your life isn't more important than other people's lives." Too bad, this couldn't be at the core of more people on all sides of this conflict.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An impressive achievement, September 8, 2007

By	Philippe Horak (Zug, Switzerland) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Attack (Paperback)

Amin Jaafari is a hard-working and talented surgeon at a busy Tel Aviv hospital, two generations away from his Arab origins. He is wealthy, popular with his Jewish colleagues, and devoted to his wife Sihem. The novel opens with Amin taking charge of the chaos in the emergency room after a suicide bomber attacks a restaurant in the Hakirya district of Tel Aviv, killing 19 people including a group of schoolchildren at a birthday party. Subsequently Amin is stopped and searched four times by Israeli policemen on the way home. He only wakes up to his own misfortune when he learns that Sihem has been killed in the bombing and that her wounds correspond to those found on suicide bombers.
Amin refuses to believe that Sihem could have committed such an act of terror. He expects her to return soon from Kfar Kanna where she is visiting her old grandmother. Disbelief gives way to horror when Sihem's last letter, posted from Bethlehem, turns up in his post box. As a consequence of Sihem's attack Amin's life, ambition, values and friendships disintegrate. He locks himself up in a nightmare of drink and despair in which he reflects on every aspect of his life, nationality and marriage. A Jewish colleague, Kim Yehuda, calls Amin back from the brink. He retraces Sihem's last journey from Tel Aviv to Bethlehem and back again. There Amin is repeatedly beaten up: by the Shin Bet, his Tel Aviv neighbours and Palestinian militants in the West Bank towns of Bethlehem and Jenin that were under siege by the Israeli army. Nevertheless he clings to his belief that as a surgeon his fight consists in recreating life in the place where death has chosen to conduct its manoeuvres.
The Attack uses both suicide bombing and the fate of many Israeli citizens who are of Arab origin. These are the descendants of the Arabs who stayed in the country rather than go into exile at the formation of Israel in 1948. Like Amin Jaafari in the story, they have suffered discrimination and mistreatment but have also prospered, and are now squeezed between an tormented Jewish state and their rebel fellow Arabs in Gaza and on the West Bank.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars hauntingly beautiful, July 2, 2007

By	lawyermomathome (Ridgefield, CT United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Attack (Paperback)

I couldn't put this book down. The language is exquisite and the story shocking but believable. This is a must-read, and excellent for a book group discussion.