Tuesday 5 September 2017

Waking Lions by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen

Dr Eitan Green is a good man. He saves lives. Then, speeding along a deserted moonlit road in his SUV, he hits someone. Seeing that the man, an African migrant, is beyond help, he flees the scene. It is a decision that changes everything. 

Because the dead man’s wife knows what happened. When she knocks at Eitan’s door the next day, tall and beautiful, he discovers that her price is not money. It is something else entirely, something that will shatter Eitan’s safe existence and take him into a world of secrets and lies.


Waking Lions is a gripping, suspenseful and morally devastating drama of guilt and survival, shame and desire.


This beautifully written book is one that will stay with me for a long time. It is slow paced and packed with detail and deserved to be savoured rather than read at speed.

The book deals with some serious issues; identity, betrayal and morality. It closely explores the theme of self identity through the main character, Eitan, and through his pre-conceived ideas of how he would react in any given situation and which leads the reader to the same state of self-examination. This is a book that is about self-awakening to the problems of others outside of our own comfortable existence and the author sensitively examines both larger issues and the minutiae of the lives of her characters.

I thought this was a fantastic book and I am not surprised that it won The Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize 2017. I highly recommend it and I will certainly be reading more by this author.

ISBN: 978-1782272984

Publisher: Pushkin Press

About the Author:

Ayelet Gundar-Goshen (Hebrew: איילת גונדר-גושן) was born in Israel in 1982 and holds an MA in Clinical Psychology from Tel Aviv University. Her film scripts have won prizes at international festivals, including the Berlin Today Award and the New York City Short Film Festival Award. Her debut novel, One Night, Markovitch, won the Sapir Prize in 2013 for best debut and is being translated into five languages.

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