In Lawrence Wright’s new thriller set in the Mid­dle East, rage leaps off the page. It per­me­ates the lives of the book’s char­ac­ters: Jew­ish set­tlers and Pales­tini­ans liv­ing in the West Bank. Dri­ven by his­tor­i­cal vic­tim­iza­tion, shame, and a lust for vengeance, this rage feeds a cycle of vio­lence.

Such is the world await­ing Pales­tin­ian Amer­i­can FBI agent Tony Malik when he trav­els to Hebron to attend a cousin’s wed­ding. Ear­ly in his stay, an Israeli police chief from a near­by set­tle­ment, Jacob Wein­garten, is bru­tal­ly mur­dered. As the inves­ti­ga­tion unfolds, Malik finds him­self assist­ing the Israeli police inspec­tor Yos­si Ben-Gal. 

Yos­si is the oppo­site of his late boss, Jacob, who was pas­sive and peace-mind­ed, qual­i­ties that may have got­ten him killed. Yos­si has a check­ered past that includes break­ing the arms of stone-throw­ing Pales­tin­ian teenagers while serv­ing in the Israel Defense Forces. He is also open­ly anti-Arab, a source of ten­sion between him and Malik, who comes to embrace his father’s Pales­tin­ian her­itage dur­ing his trip.

Togeth­er, they con­front Hamas oper­a­tives, local Meir Kahane adher­ents, and cor­rup­tion with­in Yossi’s own police depart­ment. 

The plot is propul­sive, unfold­ing with urgency in the months, weeks, and days lead­ing up to Octo­ber 7th, 2023. At times, how­ev­er, Malik seems less like a ful­ly-devel­oped char­ac­ter and more a sound­ing board for voic­es on all sides of the Israeli – Pales­tin­ian con­flict. Still, Wright ren­ders the con­test­ed his­to­ry, psy­chol­o­gy, and argu­ments that col­or those view­points in a deeply affect­ing way. 

​“Israel was cre­at­ed by a griev­ing peo­ple,” Yossi’s daugh­ter, Sara, tells Malik at one point. ​“If we had dealt with that, if we had accept­ed our suf­fer­ing, we might have found hap­pi­ness, if such a thing exists for a nation. But we let our grief define us. All this rage, this depres­sion, shame, this insis­tence on revenge — they are expres­sions of a grief that is too big for us, too big for any peo­ple.”

The book’s cast of char­ac­ters tend to have extrem­ist lean­ings. They’re peo­ple who would not hes­i­tate to kill or die for their side — who would even wel­come the oppor­tu­ni­ty. But Malik comes to believe that these cross-sec­tions do not rep­re­sent the broad­er pop­u­la­tions swept up in the unend­ing con­flict, peo­ple large­ly resigned to the arc of his­to­ry and the dev­as­tat­ing acts of their lead­ers. 

And yet to Malik (and Wright), they too bear respon­si­bil­i­ty: “… nei­ther side [has] worked to elim­i­nate the vio­lent actors inside their com­mu­ni­ties,” Malik thinks. ​“Instead, the extrem­ists were tol­er­at­ed, even elect­ed to high office. They served a pur­pose, and the pur­pose was to pro­long the con­flict, jus­ti­fy the hatred, and rid the land of the other.”