Fic­tion

Dog

  • Review
By – October 3, 2025

In his debut novel­la, Yishay Ishi Ron­draws on his own expe­ri­ences to craft an inti­mate, raw, yet ten­der por­trait of his protagonist’s psy­che and that of Israel’s wound­ed soci­ety. Read today against the head­lines out of Gaza, Dog wields per­haps even greater force and urgency than when it was first pub­lished, in Hebrew, in June 2023. Yardenne Greenspan’s nim­ble trans­la­tion cap­tures the original’s grit­ty, propul­sive lyri­cism, and trag­ic, humane depths.

Dogs nar­ra­tor is Geller, a dec­o­rat­ed offi­cer from an elite com­bat unit, who now stalks the under­bel­ly of Tel Aviv to feed his hero­in addic­tion and lives with two oth­er junkies. Wound­ed in com­bat dur­ing a Gaza cam­paign, he is haunt­ed by vis­cer­al mem­o­ries of his com­rades burn­ing alive in an armored per­son­nel car­ri­er. He also fix­ates on the mem­o­ry of a dog, cru­el­ly killed dur­ing com­bat oper­a­tions. When a stray mutt cross­es his path, he des­per­ate­ly attempts to care for it despite his strug­gles to even feed him­self. Estranged from his old army com­rades and his fam­i­ly, too, he faults his father, who lies comatose in a hos­pi­tal, con­nect­ed to his drip irri­ga­tion sys­tem like a hydro­pon­ic plant.” Geller mus­es bit­ter­ly, I know that if he were con­scious he’d show me the way out of drugs. Some­times I hate him for all the poi­son he’d fed me over the years about the com­man­dos, his sto­ries about the First Lebanon War, the con­quer­ing of the Beau­fort. He bot­tle-fed me Golani lore.” He thinks, I had no choice but to grow up to fill his shoes.” In this sense, Geller is a sur­ro­gate for gen­er­a­tions of Israeli youth, raised on an ide­al­iza­tion of mil­i­tarism and self-sac­ri­fice in pur­suit of nation­al­ist goals.

Dogs themes are dark, and the vio­lence in Geller’s past and present is per­va­sive, yet an empha­sis on nur­tur­ing rela­tion­ships emerges. Doris, a woman with her own sad his­to­ry, sees some­thing in Geller, and becomes intent on improv­ing his cir­cum­stances. For his part, Geller does his best to pro­tect the unnamed, abused dog he’s tak­en under his care. Only much lat­er does the basis for Geller’s devo­tion to the stray become clear.

Geller’s heartrend­ing jour­ney is relayed in short, sus­pense­ful chap­ters, some of which are told, effec­tive­ly, from the belea­guered dog’s per­spec­tive. Noth­ing is quite lin­ear in Geller’s sto­ry, and its por­tray­al of trau­ma and addic­tion, recov­ery and relapse, is unspar­ing. Cru­cial events fade in and out. But after Geller is accused of mur­der­ing one of his fel­low squat­ters and faces the prospect of an even more tor­ment­ed future, the final third of Dog races ahead toward its emo­tion­al conclusion. 

In a stir­ring author’s note, Ishi Ron describes his own expe­ri­ence with the hor­rors of wartime trau­ma and addic­tion, and over­com­ing his pro­longed dis­be­lief that his severe PTSD was a med­ical con­di­tion that could be treat­ed. Ron ded­i­cates the book to the unspec­i­fied com­bat­ants whose eyes have seen things that their minds refuse to for­get.” For that grim rea­son alone, Dog deserves to find a wide, glob­al audience. 

Ranen Omer-Sher­man is the JHFE Endowed Chair in Juda­ic Stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Louisville, author of sev­er­al books and edi­tor of Amos Oz: The Lega­cy of a Writer in Israel and Beyond.

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