Review: Honour Among Thieves – Jeffrey Archer

Authors of the Archer style are the perfect fit for a long weekend where the weather is poor and you are desperate to forget those things you forgot to do, (but recalled unfortunately later that evening), before you left work for the extended break. A page turning plot, but not too complex that your mind seeking absolute relaxation will be called into further action than to try and pronounce an authors attempt at a foreign name.

Honour Among Thieves turned out to fit that bill perfectly as I lifted it from the shelf for a read. In fact it outdid expectations. The story revolves around simultaneously occurring plot lines where one country's secret agents plot to do harm to their enemies, or find out what harm is planned for another. Archer wrote this book in the early 1990's at the conclusion of the first Gulf War giving the chief protagonists as being the USA (with Bill Clinton as President), Israel (Yitzhak Rabin as Prime Minister) and Iraq (Saddam Hussein as President).

Cover Image thanks to bookdepository.co.uk

The Iraqis seek the USA's humiliation, the Israelis for blood (Saddam's) and the United States information on what the other two nations are up to. The Iraqis have hatched a plan to steal the USA's Declaration of Independence while at the same time the Israelis plan to assassinate Saddam Hussein. Although predictably these plot lines converge for an expected ending, the book leaves the reader turning to the very end before finding out just how it works.

Archer among others has had instances in free flowing thrillers such as this as leaving the reader hanging until the end, but then wrapping up the story with an impossible turn of events that somehow must be accepted as the end of the story. Honour Among Thieves has not fallen into this trap. The ending is of course improbable (but then so are all the events of this and most novels) but it is worthwhile given the investment of time the reader has put in.

Because there are so many different characters Archer has not tried to give background on each of them too extensively. In such a story he has found the balance right between giving enough information for each, but not overburdening the reader with descriptions of any character in a book where all are equal contributors to the story.

Archer, as is his regular will, does have a passionate love affair written in between the American agent Scott Bradley, and the Israeli agent Hannah Kopec (who just happens to be a former resident of Parisian catwalks). Archer can get carried away with his descriptions of love affairs in his works that border on being perverse rather than helpful to the read, but in this book he gets the balance right. You know there is passion, but you don't need a fifth of the book to know it either.

One of his best and perfect for an entertaining read without excessive mental exertion. Tennis Balls.

Review: I Shall Not Hate - Izzeldin Abuelaish

by Glenn Jessop

A book with balls? Izzeldin's story has it in spades.

A potted history of this autobiographer’s life: Born at the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza in 1955, eldest of six brothers and three sisters, Izzeldin worked hard to help support his family while at the same time applying himself diligently at school. At 14 he was employed on a Jewish farm at an Israeli town north of the Gaza Strip, a foundational experience which helped him realise that Jewish people were people just like himself (i.e. Palestine). Weeks after returning to Gaza his family home was bulldozed to the ground by Israeli tanks. He persisted in his studies in medicine, seeing this as a bridge between two nations at war. In 1983 he graduated as a doctor from the University of Cairo and then obtained a diploma in obstetrics and gynecology from the Ministry of Health in Saudi Arabia. He became the first Palestinian obstetrician and gynecologist to be given a residency in an Israeli hospital, and continued to study and practice in a range of countries, eventually moving into policy development and research. During his pioneering career he maintained a passion for using health to achieve justice.

In 2008/09 his life took a cruel turn. His wife died of acute leukemia and within four months his house was bombed by Israeli tanks, killing three daughters and a niece. The pain and injustice of the death of innocent people jumped off the pages and shook my faith in humanity. Izzeldin’s response quickly restored it. He saw it as an opportunity to heal wounds and find a new way forward. As he courageously and generously declared:

“What happened to my family still strikes me as inconceivable. I lost three beautiful daughters and a wonderful, loving niece. What I can say is this: Let my daughters be the last to die. Let this tragedy open the eyes of the world. If I could know that my daughters were the last sacrifice on the road to peace between Palestinians and Israelis, then I would accept their loss”.

He concludes with a simple but astoundingly simple challenge (and solution): “It’s time we sat down and talked to each other”. Following the publication of his book Izzeldin was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010.

What struck me throughout this account was the author’s struggle in facing impossibly frustrating circumstances (such as protracted border crossings, prejudiced views and war), whilst maintaining patience, courage and hope. He certainly practices what he preaches: using the death of his daughters as a call to peace, using the promise and practices of medicine to improve relations between two nations at constant loggerheads, and defending the ideal of a common humanity wherever possible.

Izzeldin is a man with a powerful story, one which offers a stirring account of life in the Gaza Strip. I for one have watched the events in the Middle East – and the conflict of Israel and the Palestinians – over the course of my life and never fully understood the dimensions and human context of the situation. Whilst I will never completely comprehend it, this book certainly helped me to understand the human element, the utter anguish and pure frustration of a man and his family living as Palestinians in Gaza. In a situation that strikes me as hopeless, this story conveyed a ray of hope, and helped me to gain sympathy for those in such circumstances.

Understanding ‘the other’ is a critical and fundamental tool to combat injustice, prejudice, inequality and war; reading this book is one small step in seeing life through the eyes of another.

Basketballs

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