The Sniper, the Shopkeeper and Sami

by Geoff Daplyn

A suicide bombing in Jerusalem brings Medad, a 20 year old Israeli Defence Forces sniper and Hani, a young Palestinian shopkeeper, into each other's lives. Their lives will become deeply intertwined in a peace process.

Ayshaa, Hani's wife, wants a different life for her little girl Rena and begins working with other Palestinian organisations to empower women with the risk of religious and cultural tensions. As the story unfolds, there is the inevitable role for Chuck, the American diplomat; Abd Alraheem the Palestinian traitor; Larry the CIA contact, Angra Mainyu, the Iranian 'diplomat' based in Lebanon and Sami, the teenage blogger from Gaza.

A well connected, yet shadowy Israeli hard right wing group also begin to take matters into their own hands to even up the odds, as they see it.

What will Hamas do? Who will win? Who will lose? Who will survive?

472 pages, Paperback

Published May 21, 2021

Reviews

[Will Parker · Rating 3 out of 5]

I know Geoff but not well so was interested to try this, his first self published novel. He dives straight in the deep end by writing about the Israeli - Palestine conflict and doing so from a perspective supportive of the Palestinian cause. Indeed, the book came up in an article I read about Palestinian Book Awards. So the book lacked a credible character supportive of the Zionist argument. I thought Geoff brought out well the injustices experienced by the Palestinian people and how hard it is for them to improve their lot. There is a sense of impending doom in the book which the people of Gaza are now going through.

I'd have given the book 4 stars but for two reasons. The book tails off after what all the main characters are working towards fails ; it would have been better to end it there. But we do get to meet Sami from Gaza who is a great addition to the story. The second reason is that the sub-editing is awful; there's a mistake on every page