The Terrorist

by Barry Levy

WITH bombs and missiles going off in Israel, Gaza, Lebanon and other flashpoints in the Middle East, what happens when you drop an Arab Muslim student into a Western Jewish home: a search for meaning, values, identity, truth - and a lot of suspicion. In fact a house turned upside down. This is the story of The Terrorist - until its soul-shaking end.

300 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2012

About the author

2012, November - The Terrorist - (Interactive Press, Brisbane)
book:The Terrorist|9781922120076
With bombs and missiles going off in Israel and Gaza and other flashpoints in the Middle East, what happens when you drop an Arab Muslim student into a Western Jewish home: a search for meaning, values, identity, truth - and a lot of suspicion. In fact a house turned upside down. This is the story of The Terrorist - until its soul-shaking end.

2013, June - Sawdust - (Glass House Books)
With its honest description of the complexities between abuser and abused (father and daughter), Sawdust is a frank, serious and even light and funny at times account of someone's life of abuse, and one you will feel inspired by because of its message of hope, and even forgiveness. There are life lessons in it for all of us.

2011 – Shades of Exodus – (Interactive Press, Brisbane)
book:Shades Of Exodus|11308962
A soul-searching portrait that encapsulates universal dilemmas common to all migrants: identity, loss, the search for meaning, and revolves around the true story of a South African family who were the victims of a vicious and violent crime in Australia while trying to flee the violence of South Africa.

2010 - chapter The Souls From Nowhereland published in compilation, Shall I Stay or Shall I Go? Tim Richman, editor (Two Dogs Books, Cape Town).

May 2008 – As If! – (Interactive Press, Brisbane)
book:As If!|6363547

A novel that immerses us in the world of youth homelessness in Australia. Often dark and sometimes cold, bloody and brutal, it is also filled with pathos, love and humanity. Once submerged in that world, we see there is no easy way out.


August 2004 – Burning Bright (Kwela Books, Cape Town)
Also published in Italy (Del Vecchio Editore)
book:Burning Bright|1132505

A coming of age novel set against South Africa’s apartheid years of the mid seventies, explores manipulation and control, love and hate, as some of the underlying issues of child sex abuse.

2000 - short story The Promised Land published in compilation under title of principal author and Nobel Prize laureate Nadine Gordimer’s short story At the Rendezvous of Victory (Kwela Books, Cape Town).

1989 - novella Farewell, Mrs Eels (The Open School), in collection of poetry and prose - Scenes From Another Day — New South African Writing.

1986 - The Glazer Kidnapping (Hans Strydom Publishers, JHB)
Autobiographical story of Kenny Levy, one of three Levy brothers involved in what was at the time (1967) the world’s biggest kidnapping. Kenny Levy was sentenced to six years in prison for his part in the kidnapping but maintained his innocence of any misdemeanour other than accepting around $2000 (times by at least 10 for today’s values) for the unknowing favour of giving two scoundrels — one of them his older brother, Effie (sentenced to 15 years) — a lift to the scene of the crime. The other kidnapper, Stanley Jawitz, committed suicide while running from police.


Worked in South Africa in the print media (from 1974) until left the country for Australia in June 1984.

Papers worked on in South Africa included: Sunday Express, Sunday Times, Rand Daily Mail. In the two years prior to coming to Australia was managing editor of Drum, a full colour magazine with a mainly black readership of around one and a half million. (The magazine was the subject of a popular international film called Drum.)

Since coming to Australia, worked for a short while on the Daily Sun as a sub, but gave up journalism to study towards a teaching degree.

After graduating, taught high school for a short while, and then went back into journalism, mainly regional journalism with The Queensland Times.

1996 - present: Writer plus part-time publications officer/editor, Queensland Tertiary Admissions Centre.

Winner Australian Human Rights Award for Journalism — for a multiple series of stories on child sex abuse, homelessness, and domestic violence.

Reviews

[Dottie Resnick · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is taking paranoia to a new degree. An Australian Jewish family over the years has taken in foreign university students. The current student is a Muslim from Saudi Arabia. At the same time the 2006 Lebanon-Israel war breaks out. Ben Fine, the father, is obsessed with the war, the world's view of Jews and in his compulsion brings the war and chaos into his household via television, newspapers, the Internet and in his mind. The story is vivid, detailed and well written. The surprise ending however, seems abrupt and lacking in clarity compared to the earlier intense descriptiveness.

[Denzil Hersch]

The Terrorist is  Barry Levy at his best.  I laughed out aloud at the comic scenes.  The paranoid Jewish father imagining the worst, criticising his family and the house guest – all against the background of a horrendous war seen on the television.  The push and pull of his feelings for his daughter and the tremendous guilt that he feels.  I was driven by the depth in the diversity of arguments and the contrast displayed between family members.  This is indeed a high quality tragicomedy of a family struggling with changing circumstances and their sense of 'Jewishness' -- intensified and 'enlightened' by having a foreigner staying in the house and a war going on in the Middle East.
 
 Denzil