Cut Throat Dog

November 29, 2010
Teasing out the storyline of Israeli playwright Sobol's English language debut requires more effort than readers may want to invest. Years earlier, the Israeli operative known as Shakespeare lost a good friend, Jonas, to a Syrian terrorist, Tino Rossi. Intelligence reported that Tino's corpse was found in the Libyan desert, but in the present, Shakespeare becomes convinced that the terrorist is alive and well and hanging out in Manhattan bars. Those expecting a standard, linear, stalking of quarry plot will be disappointed, and even Americans with some familiarity with Israeli society will find the author's baroque style, with lapses into broad parody, hard to digest. Sobol's dramas and his views on the Palestinian issue have been controversial in his native country, but this offbeat novel is unlikely to spark much debate, political or otherwise.

October 15, 2010
Once, Hanina was a Mossad agent whose team tracked down the murderers of members of Israels 1968 Olympic team. Now, hes the director of an Israeli advertising agency trying to win an account to advertise a new, unisex super Viagra that promises not only erections but also stamina, passion, and even love. But on a Manhattan street, Hanina, aka Shakespeare, spots Tino the Syrian, a terrorist he tried to kill in the Libyan desert 18 years earlier. Or not. Sobol, an award-winning Israeli playwright, offers abundant evidence that Hanina is delusional or experiencing a psychic meltdown, but this interpretation is balanced by vivid accounts of his desperate battles against Israels enemies. At times, readers might think Hanina represents the memory and conscience of every Israeli, or that Haninas endless code names and pseudonyms are signs of his complete loss of identity. Its heady stuff, filled with unlikely erudition, graceful writing, clever wordplay, and shape-shifting characters and realities, as well as gritty depictions of violence and suffering. Fans of conventional thrillers will likely scratch their heads and give up, but those with a taste for the literary may be seduced by Cut Throat Dog.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)