Cut Throat Dog

International intrigue, murderous politics, and psychological suspense combine in a stylish literary thriller
 
An enigmatic Israeli who calls himself Shakespeare – because he’s got a way with words – finds himself jolted on a sidewalk in Manhattan: Is that who I think it is, he wonders, or am I crazy?
 
Who he thinks it is, is one of the world’s premier terrorists. Someone who murdered his partner. Someone he blames for the fog of despair that’s overcome him. And most shockingly, someone Shakespeare’s mysterious associates in Tel Aviv tell him had been killed in the desert.
 
So is Shakespeare cracking up, or cracking the case of a lifetime?
 
In the hands of esteemed Israeli author Joshua Sobol, the wicked riddle becomes a masterful work that transcends genre: It’s a sumptuously written literary novel and a taut spy thriller. It’s a moving recollection of a purposeful youth and a graphic account of the hunt for terrorists.  It’s the story of a mid-life crisis and the endless crisis of the Middle East. It’s a work of wild and whimsical word-play and fast-paced, deadly gun-play.
 
It is, in short, the English-language debut of a mesmerizing writer at the top of his form.

International intrigue, murderous politics, and psychological suspense combine in a stylish literary thriller
 
An enigmatic Israeli who calls himself Shakespeare – because he’s got a way with words – finds himself jolted on a sidewalk in Manhattan: Is that who I think it is, he wonders, or am I crazy?
 
Who he thinks it is, is one of the world’s premier terrorists. Someone who murdered his partner. Someone he blames for the fog of despair that’s overcome him. And most shockingly, someone Shakespeare’s mysterious associates in Tel Aviv tell him had been killed in the desert.
 
So is Shakespeare cracking up, or cracking the case of a lifetime?
 
In the hands of esteemed Israeli author Joshua Sobol, the wicked riddle becomes a masterful work that transcends genre: It’s a sumptuously written literary novel and a taut spy thriller. It’s a moving recollection of a purposeful youth and a graphic account of the hunt for terrorists.  It’s the story of a mid-life crisis and the endless crisis of the Middle East. It’s a work of wild and whimsical word-play and fast-paced, deadly gun-play.
 
It is, in short, the English-language debut of a mesmerizing writer at the top of his form.

Publishers Weekly

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.
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Joshua Sobol born in Tel Mond, Palestine (now Israel) in 1939, is an internationally acclaimed playwright. His Soul of a Jew was performed at the Edinburgh, Berlin and Chicago Festivals, and Ghetto won the Evening Standard and the London Critics award for Best Play of the Year after running at the Royal National Theater in London in 1989. He is the author of one other novel, Silence, which won the Sapir Prize, Israel’s most prestigious literary prize. This is his first translation into English.