Waking Lions

Written by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen

Narrated by Paul Boehmer

In this thrilling drama from an award-winning author, after one night's deadly mistake, a man will go to any lengths to save his family and his reputation.

Neurosurgeon Eitan Green has the perfect life—married to a beautiful police officer and father of two young boys. Then, speeding along a deserted moonlit road after an exhausting hospital shift, he hits someone. Seeing that the man, an African migrant, is beyond help, he flees the scene.

When the victim's widow knocks at Eitan's door the next day, holding his wallet and divulging that she knows what happened, Eitan discovers that her price for silence 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 he could never have anticipated.

Waking Lions is a gripping, suspenseful, and morally devastating drama of guilt and survival, shame and desire from a remarkable young author on the rise.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hachette Audio
• Release date: Feb 28, 2017
• ISBN: 9781478938613

Ayelet Gundar-Goshen

Ayelet Gundar-Goshen was born in Israel in 1982. She holds an MA in Clinical Psychology from Tel Aviv University, has been a news editor on Israel's leading newspaper and has worked for the Israeli civil rights movement. Her film scripts have won prizes at international festivals, including the Berlin Today Award and the New York City Short Film Festival Award. One Night, Markovitch, her first novel, won the Sapir Prize for best debut.

Reviews for Waking Lions

[flashflood42 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

An exhausted Israeli doctor with a policewoman wife hits a Somalia refugee in the middle of the night when he was speeding and, knowing the man would die, flees the scene. His wife has seen the hit and run, finds the doctor's wallet and demands help for injured refugees. The plot becomes far more complicated as her motives are more complex than they seem and the doctor's attraction to her though he is deeply prejudiced is fascinating. The plot becomes far more complex than it seemed it would be and I couldn't put it down even though I was traveling in Portugal--I'd stay up at night to read it and passed it on to my friend Phyllis who loved it and has passed it on to our local library for others to enjoy.

[deltaqueen50 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Waking Lions by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen is a literary thriller that is set in Israel. Neurosurgeon Eitan Green has a good life, married to a beautiful police officer and the father of two young boys but one night as he is coming off a long night shift at the hospital, he drives out into the desert and as he is speeding along a moonlit road, he hits someone. This one deadly mistake could ruin his life, his family and his reputation so as he gazes down upon the dying man, he makes the decision to not report the accident. This decision brings Sirkit into his life. She is the dead man’s wife who blackmails him into providing medical care to other illegal African refugees.

The story advances and we share in Eitan’s moral crisis as his guilt and shame engulf him. To make matters worse, his wife has been assigned to the hit and run case, and although her supervisors aren’t particularly interested in whether she finds culprit who killed an illegal immigrant, she does want to find out who did it. Eitan also can’t explain the building relationship he is developing with Sirkit, on one hand he hates her for the power she has over him, but on the other, he is struggling with the building sexual tension that arises between them.

The story is excellently written but is very dense and the pacing is quite slow. Not only are we reading of Eitan and his dilemma but also of the prejudice that exists when dealing with refugees and illegal immigrants. It’s a grim story but one that probes the complexity of our moral choices. The book is beautifully translated from Hebrew by Sondra Silverston and is a remarkable novel that deals with morality, power and prejudice.

[sblock_16 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I wish I could give this book six stars.

[squeakychu · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I found the beginning of this book making me very uncomfortable. That was not because of the hit and run accident that began the book, but it was more about Dr. Eitan Green's forced relationship to a group of poor, black, and sickly Eritrean immigrants to Israel. Eitan was a successful, married neurosurgeon and father of two boys. The character who stood out the most was a sort of a mysterious Eritrean woman named Sirkit whom we learn more about as the story advances. Extreme inequality always makes me uncomfortable, but this book set this contemporary Israeli social problem directly in front of me.

Not only did I have to deal with a doctor facing a moral dilemma in a repugnant manner, but I also had to face his attraction to a woman with whom he should have had no contact as well as to deal with his uncompromising arrogance. I had to keep telling myself that this was only a story in order to continue reading it!

This book was ultimately about all about lies and race. So many despicable and poor choices were made by the characters! The book hit a turning point for me about 90% of the way through it, when I had to keep turning the pages to see what would happen. Know as you read this long, involved story, that all is not as it seems at first. Then come along for the ride as I ended up feeling that this was a pretty good novel after all!

There is a long paragraph within this novel which gives voice to the idea of trying not to feel superior to a group of “others” and yet knowing guilt just because of that feeling. It was a relief to me learning before reading this novel that the author has worked for the Israel civil rights movement.

[phyllis.mann · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book is amazing. First, I need to explain that I read it during a month in which I was working 20-hour days, mostly 7 days a week. Though I was only able to read a few pages each night before falling asleep, the story stayed with me -- almost haunted me while I worked -- and called out to me to return to it.

Gundar-Goshen's writing is exceptional. She has an amazing ability to create deeply whole characters with vast interior lives, and at the same time to explore how each character presents themselves externally to others and how each character perceives (correctly or incorrectly, in great depth or only superficially) the true nature of themselves and others. So that is a mouthful. The short version is that she is spot on in describing the nature of our relationships to those we hold dear and to those we choose to put into the category of other.

Of course you can read a story description or synopsis of this book most anywhere, so I won't bother providing that here. Suffice it to say, after reading "Waking Lions," none of us should ever again be able to ignore the personhood -- the human story -- of individuals we pass in the street, folks we brush up against in our daily lives, and entire peoples whose plight we read about or watch in the news.

[jayne_charles_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

There is a snippet of a review, quoted on the cover of this book, that states "Gripping...twists and turns like a thriller". This led me to expect the book to be something it manifestly wasn't - ie fast moving. Everything happens very slowly and deliberately and is accompanied by much analysis and snippets of back-story. Luckily the writing is intelligent, pleasantly tactile, really high quality. I didn't greatly miss the roller-coaster ride. It was more of a cerebral experience.

[nancyadair-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

While driving in the desert at night, distracted by the most beautiful moon he has ever seen, Dr. Eitan Green hits a man. A brain surgeon, he knows the man will not live. He makes the decision to drive on, leaving the dying man. He won't risk his career by reporting the accident.

He does not know he left behind a clue or that the dying man's wife Sirkit witnessed the accident. She blackmails the doctor: he will spend his nights at a makeshift clinic caring for her fellow Eritrean refugees.

A man who prefers to live in order, who shuns the blood and shit of human frailty, the doctor is thrust into the dirty, ugly side of life. But as he works with the tall, proud woman, he comes to admire her skill and to secretly lust for her.

Dr. Green's wife is a detective on the case of the hit-and-run victim. She struggles with her husband's absence, sure he is not cheating on her, yet sensing something is not right.

Waking Lions by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen, beautifully translated from the Hebrew by Sondra Silverston, is a remarkable novel that probes the complexity of our moral choices. People do bad things or good things, for bad reasons or good ones, culminating in earned or unearned outcomes. It is about power shifts, the prejudice between Israelis, Bedouins, and African Eritreans, the refugee experience, the mystery of never really knowing one another, and how the privileged class can turn away from the uncomfortable and live in a sterile world of their own making.

The story is told by an omniscient narrator who knows the thoughts of the characters, without dialogue. Twists create an unexpectedly propulsive, action, complication.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

[mel.davidoff · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The characters are fascinatingly human. The book truly highlights the depths people can descend to when desperate, as well as the depths people can descend to when powered by greed. The language is sparse and blunt, which matches the material.

[arubabookwoman · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Eitan Green is a doctor who has been relegated to a hospital in the hinterlands after he attempted to blow the whistle on a superior who was taking bribes. His wife Liat is a police detective. One evening after a long day at work, Eitan goes for a drive in the desert, where he accidentally hits a man who appears to be an Eritrean emigrant. Eitan examines him and sees that there is no way he will survive more than a short time. He fears that if he reports the incident he will face criminal consequences including prison. So he leaves the man and goes home to his wife and young children as if nothing had happened.

The next morning when he is home alone (while his wife Liat at the police station is beginning an investigation of a hit and run incident which killed a man in the desert), the doorbell rings. The Eritrean woman standing there has his wallet which he unknowingly had lost at the accident site. Worse she witnessed the whole thing. She is willing to remain silent, but for a price. Not money, however. Instead, she requires that he provide medical care to the emigrants refugees who pass through or who reside in the area. She requires him to spend several hours or as long as necessary every night in an abandoned building they turn into a makeshift clinic caring for people who feel they cannot go to a hospital but who desparately need care.

A nightmare begins for Eitan. He is now at the Eritrean woman's beck and call. He has to lie to his employer at the hospital, he has to lie to his wife, he has to steal medical supplies from the hospital for the clinic. He is overworked, exhausted, stressed out, unable to keep his lies straight, and constantly on edge. Then it gets worse. It turns out that the man killed in the accident was a drug smuggler, and the package he was to deliver to the dealers went missing. The drug lords assume that whoever hit the man took the drugs. Now, in addition to his wife searching for the hit and run driver, the drug lords are after him too.

Despite its thriller plot, this novel sometimes moves slowly and is not particularly a page turner. There is a lot of angst, and it has been described as a "moral thriller." Overall I liked it.

3 stars

[shazjhb · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Excellent book but such a bad translation. Considering how many people are fluent in both Hebrew and English a better translation would have been possible. Interesting moral issues.

[wassilissa · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

8 von 10
Das Buch ist definitiv unendlich interessant, weil es zu Spekulationen anregt: Was würdest du tun, wenn du einen illegalen Eritreer überfahren würdest? Wenn du wüsstest, dass du nie mehr in deinem Beruf arbeiten könntest, wenn herauskommt?
Von dieser inneren Spannung lebt das Buch primär, doch auch weitere Themen spielen eine Rolle: Nicht zuletzt geht es um Ehe, Liebe und Loyalität. So ist das Buch auch nahezu unerträglich zu lesen.
Das Ende bringt eine sehr interessante Aussage: "Er sagt dem Verkäufer im Lebensmittelladen auf Wiedersehen und weiß, sie sehen sich am nächsten Tag wieder, und die Tomaten werden, selbst wenn sie sich stark verteuern sollten, weiterhin erschwinglich für ihn bleiben. Wie schön ist die Erdkugel auf ihrer richtigen Bahnen. Wie angenehm, sich mit ihr zu drehen. Zu vergessen, dass es einmal eine andere Bahn gegeben hat. Dass eine andere Bahn im Bereich des Möglichen liegt."

[maimonedes_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The setting of this novel is the city of Beersheba - the upscale suburb of Omer and the desert margins to its south; but much of the action takes place in the minds of its main protagonists. This is perhaps not surprising, as the author, whose second novel this is, as well as being an award-winning scriptwriter, is also trained as a clinical psychologist.

Eitan, a brain surgeon, has just moved to Omer with his policewoman wife Liat and two young children. He has been transferred to a Beersheba hospital following a dispute with his head of department in Tel Aviv. Driving his SUV at night on a desert road, trying to unwind after a long session in surgery, he hits an Eritrean immigrant and injures him fatally. Eitan, knowing that there is no chance that the man he has run over can survive his injuries, and with a panicked instinct for self-preservation, drives off and returns home. However, his victim’s wife has seen the accident, and shows up at Eitan’s home the next morning with his wallet, that he had dropped at the scene. With the hold she has over him, Sirkit forces Eitan into a relationship with her and the community of illegal immigrants trying to survive in the shadows of Israeli society.

This is essentially a story about the psychology of prejudice and discrimination; about how people who live on the margins of society are seen as less than people; how they are perceived as an undifferentiated group, all sharing the identical attributes, and treated accordingly. Eitan is forced to see them - in particular the woman on whose good will his future now depends - as individuals. An unlikely love triangle develops - between Eitan, his wife and the Eritrean woman - but in this novel it plays out only in the minds of the three protagonists.

The continuous exposure of the inner lives of the protagonists is exhaustive, and creates an intensity and tension to the unfolding of the plot. Eitan is a very honest man whose exile to Beersheba came about because of his refusal to countenance the less-than-honest behaviour of his Tel Aviv boss. This magnifies the guilt he feels about the hit-and-run incident with which the novel opens and about his developing feelings for Sirkit. Liat, who has learned to trust in someone only after a long and cautious trial, fights hard against the suspicions that her husband’s increasingly erratic behaviour is arousing in her. Sirkit, who has always known that the best chance of survival comes from being submissive, keeping her eyes averted from others’ gaze, is traumatised by her new self-assertiveness. The problem - if there is one - is that it is not just the principal protagonists who are subject to this analytical treatment. The details we learn about the childhood and background of several bit-players are just Too Much Information. The author’s attempt to explore in this way the mindset of Bedouin Arabs and the prejudices against them, as another marginalised part of Israeli society, is just a distraction from her main theme, and falls short.

The novel, originally written in Hebrew and masterfully translated, is unself-conscious about its Israeli/Jewish setting. Although the details are specific to Israel - the illegal immigrants are Eritreans who have made it on foot from the Horn of Africa, surviving the crossing of the Sinai with unscrupulous Bedouin people-smugglers - it could be taking place anywhere in the world. The prejudices it explores are not in this case racial - Israel is after all a multi-racial society - but are the prejudices and fears of society in relation to uninvited newcomers, which obstruct any normal tendency to know or empathise with them as people. It has much relevance for the situation that has developed in Europe over the last few years, where these same prejudices undoubtedly have played a part in fuelling populist anti-immigrant sentiment. The novel is gripping and credible, both at the level of the personal relationships between the main characters, and also at the level of the societal interactions within which these relationships are set.

[jtck121166 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Bought on the strength of a trusted magazine book review, and yes, there are definitely strengths here: interesting insights into an unusual setting - society in a part of the world unknown to me; sympathetic characters; compelling plot. But, I think, suffers from indulgent editing: at least one other reviewer here mentions 'slow in places' or similar. As in Wagner, there are, shall we say, longeurs. Not as in Wagner though, such longeurs are superfluous and, worse, detract from the experience of reading the novel. Lose the various meditative ruminations throughout, i.e. cut by about a third, then we're safely into 4 stars, possibly touching on five.