CrocAttack!

(Paperback)

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A darkly comic novel about the bizarre realities of life in Israel today.
Why is everyone so paranoid in this country Can't dark guys get on buses with suit bags any more

Eitan Enoch - 'Croc' to his friends - is taking his usual bus to work in Tel Aviv one morning when a fellow passenger starts to worry about the dark-skinned man with the suit-bag sitting up at the front.Thus begins a week of bloody bombings and bloodier reprisals, at the end of which Croc is transformed into an inadvertent national celebrity: 'CrocAttack - the man the terrorists couldn't kill!' Naturally, the Palestinian cell behind the attacks are less than happy about this reluctant symbol of Israeli defiance. They may not have been after him before, but they are now.

Meanwhile, in a hospital somewhere in Jerusalem, a young Palestinian suicide bomber lies in a coma, fighting for his life and trying to piece together how he got there - and just exactly what happened when he finally met the Croc

Fast as a thriller, blackly funny and very contemporary, CrocAttack! is the story of the lethal convergence of two very different lives, and a tragicomic portrait of the country exploding around them.

Reviews

Unflinching and compassionate. David Mitchell

Excellent: smart, funny and authentic. Joe Dunthorne

Assaf Gavron has done the impossible: written a darkly funny novel about suicide bombing. In a dazzling display of empathy, Gavron creates two equally compelling narrators, the bomber and his victim. This is a virtuoso work; a pitch-perfect rendering of real Israeli life in all its chaos, energy, humour and terror. I couldn't put it down. Geraldine Brooks

[An] original and powerful writer. His clear and honest writing blasts right through the clichs and the politically correct surface to touch the chaotic and ambiguous core of the Israeli identity. Etgar Keret

Author Bio

Assaf Gavron is a writer and translator. He grew up in Jerusalem, studied in London and Vancouver, and now lives in Tel Aviv. In Israel has published four novels, a short story collection, and a collection of falafel reviews.