WAKING LIONS by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen

The opening to this novel revived old memories of The Bonfire of the Vanities.  However, the hit-and-run accident takes place in Israel, and the victim is an Eritrean immigrant, making this book also a little reminiscent of The Tortilla Curtain.  The driver, Eitan Green, is a neurosurgeon who knows that the victim will die anyway and elects not to turn himself in, despite the fact that his wife is a police detective.  The victim’s wife, Sirkit, decides to exact penance from Green by blackmailing him into treating ill and injured immigrants in a makeshift clinic.  Green carries out this activity without the knowledge of his wife or his superiors at the hospital, but we know that his lies about his after-hours whereabouts will surely eventually catch up with him.  Obviously, Green is no saint, but neither is Sirkit, as we learn more and more about her oppressed life and her not-so-charitable motivations.  These two characters have a love-hate relationship, and their uneasy attraction to one another builds.  Meanwhile, Green’s wife develops an interest in investigating the hit-and-run accident and stirs up even more trouble.  I really liked this book, even though it’s a translation, with all its ethical lapses and sinister undertones.  The author tackles a smattering of hot topics—race, immigration, the illegal drug trade, police brutality, domestic violence—without losing sight of Eitan’s personal struggles.  There were several points in the novel where I thought his deceit was finally going to be revealed, costing him his marriage, his job, and his reputation, but he improbably manages to string everyone along for months.  Things get more than a little crazy at the end, but I really found the outcome nifty and satisfying, in a twisted sort of way.