The Attack

By: Yasmina Khadra

Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki

Length: 7 hrs and 13 mins

Publisher's summary

Dr. Amin Jaafari, an Arab-Israeli citizen, is a respected, dedicated surgeon at a hospital in Tel Aviv. He has learned to live with the violence that plagues his city and works tirelessly to help the victims brought to the emergency room. But one night, a deadly bombing in a local restaurant takes a horrifyingly personal turn, when his wife's body is found among the dead, bearing injuries that match those typically found on the bodies of fundamentalist suicide bombers.

As evidence mounts that his wife, Sihem, was responsible for the catastrophic bombing, Dr. Jaafari must face the inescapable realization that the beautiful, intelligent, thoroughly modern woman he loved had a secret life that was far removed from the comfortable, assimilated existence they shared.

©2006 Yasmina Khadra (P)2006 Blackstone Audiobooks

Critic reviews

• AudioFile Earphones Award Winner

"Powerful and engrossing." (Booklist)
"The Attack, Yasmina Khadra's best book, is an urgent, must-read." (Paris Match)
"Moving....[Khadra] nicely captures his hero's turmoil in trying to come to terms with the endless violence." (Publishers Weekly)
"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)

Book seems to justify jihadists

This book not only has an extremely obvious ending but everything in between just acts as a justification for Muslim jihadism

An unblinking look at a complex question

Yasmina Khadra unfolds a completely believable story here, because the circumstances are so firmly rooted in the daily realities of life in a divided land. It's easy in the West to see Palestinians only through the stereotypes of Hezbollah and Fatah, but Khadra's Dr. Jaafari is just a man trying to live a decent life and do some good in the world. He transcends his heritage, but ultimately cannot escape it.

The supremely nuanced story suffers a bit from Stefan Rudnicki's narration, which is somewhat heavy-handed.

First person narrative offers another POV

Ironically, the male characters were more understandable,sympathetic than the females...since the author is a woman. She had the opportunity to get inside the motivations behind apparent insanity, but failed to fully explain. I want more information about all the characters than was available here.

troubling, but engrossing

I really enjoyed this book. The writing is excellent and the perspective is not one you encounter every day.

Harsh and beautiful, just like Judea

This book, was given to me in my class to write a book review on. I don't know what I expected from this read, but I received way more than I had hoped. This story shows the beautiful relation between life and death. Some choose to heal, others take, and others defend. Yet they all share the living in common and they will all share death in the end. Dr. Amin Jaafari is a beautiful protagonist that seems to battle all signs of grief, and at the very end he seems to have come to the final stage of grief. We see the final resolution that will break up your heart just like the Palestinian Israeli conflict.

a good listen

Excellent listen, thought provoking

Clichés Galore

Khadra has chosen an interesting subject: the reaction of an Israeli-Palestinian doctor to learning that his wife was a suicide bomber. Unfortunately, the novel is fairly predictable, the characters stereotypical and not particularly believable, and the writing (or perhaps it's the translation)--well, it's rather overwritten. I wanted to like this book and wanted to feel that I was coming to some important point or understanding from the experience of reading it, but (like Amin) I guess I never really got it, aside from some rather florid and generic statements about nationalism and humiliation.