The conflict between Israelis and Palestinians has reached a new, horrific pitch. But even after Hamas’s surprise attack on 7 October, massacring more than 1,400 Israeli civilians and taking nearly 200 hostage – and the inevitable, lethal Israeli response – a challenge confronts writers on this topic. Put simply, the underlying conflict is stuck in a deadlock that has come to seem permanent: how, then, to write a book that does not repeat scores of previous accounts, that does not itself sound like a stuck record?
Nathan Thrall, a former official of the International Crisis Group, has found an answer. Despite his résumé, he has not written an analysis or policy document, still less a 10-point peace plan, but rather a compelling work of nonfiction, a book that is by turns deeply affecting and, in its concluding chapters, as tense as a thriller.
