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Dog
DOG is a poignant and unflinching exploration of the search for meaning after the wreckage of war, told through the eyes of an Israeli combat officer returning from Gaza. Haunted by trauma, he spirals into heroin addiction, finding himself among Tel Aviv’s community of misfit junkies—until a stray dog enters his life and becomes a beacon of hope, guiding him through a transformative journey marked by despair, resilience, and ultimately hope for salvation.
Beyond its deeply personal narrative, DOG offers a raw and immersive examination of PTSD’s mechanisms— how extreme stress, moral injury, and the experience of combat can rewire the brain, making a return to civilian life seem nearly impossible. With sharp social critique and profound emotional depth, the novel sheds light on invisible wounds and those who carry them, while illustrating the therapeutic power of a simple soulful connection, and how the path to redemption can be illuminated in the most unexpected of ways.
Beyond its deeply personal narrative, DOG offers a raw and immersive examination of PTSD’s mechanisms— how extreme stress, moral injury, and the experience of combat can rewire the brain, making a return to civilian life seem nearly impossible. With sharp social critique and profound emotional depth, the novel sheds light on invisible wounds and those who carry them, while illustrating the therapeutic power of a simple soulful connection, and how the path to redemption can be illuminated in the most unexpected of ways.
176 pages, Hardcover
Published October 1, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 42 reviews
January 5, 2026
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.
DOG is an emotional novel about combat PTSD and the things we do to stay sane (even if we might no longer seem sane to anyone else). Struggling with heroin addiction and PTSD from his time in Gaza, the narrator desperately tries to get permission for a second chance, which he thinks will happen once he is able to bend a spoon with his mind like Uri Geller. His second chance does not come in the form of a bent spoon, though, but in the shapes of Dog and Doris, who are there for him until he starts believing maybe he might deserve that.
This is not about the currently ongoing war in Gaza, but about all the previous wars in Gaza that really weren't much different. And it is about what it does to a man to kill innocents and to KNOW you killed innocents, dehumanising the enemy so much that in the end, even dogs are considered to be "Hamas dogs" and worthy of murder. It is about loss in various forms, of friends, family, and oneself, and about humanity. It's profound, sad, but also hopeful, as Geller eventually realises that he needs help and that he DESERVES help.
This novel, ultimately, shows how dehumanising others eventually dehumanises yourself, and how compassion for "lowly" beings is what may bring you back to yourself.
DOG is an emotional novel about combat PTSD and the things we do to stay sane (even if we might no longer seem sane to anyone else). Struggling with heroin addiction and PTSD from his time in Gaza, the narrator desperately tries to get permission for a second chance, which he thinks will happen once he is able to bend a spoon with his mind like Uri Geller. His second chance does not come in the form of a bent spoon, though, but in the shapes of Dog and Doris, who are there for him until he starts believing maybe he might deserve that.
This is not about the currently ongoing war in Gaza, but about all the previous wars in Gaza that really weren't much different. And it is about what it does to a man to kill innocents and to KNOW you killed innocents, dehumanising the enemy so much that in the end, even dogs are considered to be "Hamas dogs" and worthy of murder. It is about loss in various forms, of friends, family, and oneself, and about humanity. It's profound, sad, but also hopeful, as Geller eventually realises that he needs help and that he DESERVES help.
This novel, ultimately, shows how dehumanising others eventually dehumanises yourself, and how compassion for "lowly" beings is what may bring you back to yourself.
May 10, 2026
Maybe 4.5 but deserves a round up. Dark. Horrific. Relentless. The writing is excellent, makes you feel like you’re in the mind of a man on the street suffering from severe PTSD using heroine to numb himself. It’s immersive-ness and pace reminded me a bit of the Safdie brothers film Heaven Knows What
Couldn’t put it down.
Couldn’t put it down.
April 4, 2026
Highly recommend this window into the world of PTSD, addiction and survivor guilt. Beautifully translated from Hebrew .
October 2, 2025
Yishay Ishi Ron writes with vivid, precise beauty. His prose transported me straight into the dump, the coffee shop, the apartments. I loved Doris’s warmth and humour, and I adored Dog’s point of view — tender, sweet, and utterly convincing.
Yet what began as grit became, for me, relentless cruelty. I came into Dog prepared for the messy realities of trauma and war but not for repeated scenes of animal suffering. They tipped me from discomfort into anger and overshadowed the story’s depth and heart. The ending, in particular, felt designed to shock rather than to illuminate.
I appreciated the author’s attempt to explore how ego, identity, and shame can complicate healing from PTSD, but the framing of this struggle as one of “masculinity” felt narrow, especially given the context of a nation where military service is universal. Although I recognise that he was talking about his own experience, gendering his pain and recovery felt exclusionary.
Some readers won’t mind what undid the book for me. To them, I’ll say this: the author’s and translator’s craft is undeniable. The writing in Dog amazed me, even as the story left me aching.
I received a review copy of this title from Soncata Press via NetGalley.
Yet what began as grit became, for me, relentless cruelty. I came into Dog prepared for the messy realities of trauma and war but not for repeated scenes of animal suffering. They tipped me from discomfort into anger and overshadowed the story’s depth and heart. The ending, in particular, felt designed to shock rather than to illuminate.
I appreciated the author’s attempt to explore how ego, identity, and shame can complicate healing from PTSD, but the framing of this struggle as one of “masculinity” felt narrow, especially given the context of a nation where military service is universal. Although I recognise that he was talking about his own experience, gendering his pain and recovery felt exclusionary.
Some readers won’t mind what undid the book for me. To them, I’ll say this: the author’s and translator’s craft is undeniable. The writing in Dog amazed me, even as the story left me aching.
I received a review copy of this title from Soncata Press via NetGalley.
May 31, 2025
Translated by Yardenne Greenspan. This book is in ARC form, to be published this fall (2025). A gritty, brutal look at the impact of war on fighters; at drug abuse; and at homelessness. The main character (Barak) suffers severe PTSD as a result of his experiences in Gaza in 2013, and escapes from his terrors through drug abuse. Through a connection to a dog ("DOG") and an unhappy but generous woman (Doris), he takes his first steps towards recovery, but is then arrested for murder. This novel comes out of the author's ongoing struggles with PTSD. He was a combat soldier in an elite fighting unit. The book is quite short (about 150 pages), starting slowly, but then gathering speed towards an abrupt finish. It includes an Afterword by the author, and a list of discussion questions for book groups.
July 9, 2026
Drawing heavily on his own lived experience as a former elite combat officer, Yishay Ishi Ron crafts a devastatingly authentic portrait of Geller, a decorated IDF soldier who returns from combat physically intact but psychologically shattered.
To escape the visceral flashbacks of his comrades burning alive in an armored personnel carrier, Geller spirals into severe heroin addiction, eventually finding himself homeless and squatting in the gritty underbelly of Tel Aviv.
To escape the visceral flashbacks of his comrades burning alive in an armored personnel carrier, Geller spirals into severe heroin addiction, eventually finding himself homeless and squatting in the gritty underbelly of Tel Aviv.
December 27, 2025
I am writing this through tears. Yishay Ishi Ron’s Dog is so touching, so human, so powerful that I can’t yet collect my thoughts properly.
What comes first to mind is Ari Folman’s film Waltz with Bashir, the 2008 animated documentary about the 1982 Lebanon War, built from false memories, traumatic flashbacks, and the impossible work of reconstructing what the mind refuses to remember. Like Folman’s film, Dog centers on trauma, moral injury, memory, and living with the unthinkable.
Both works understand that trauma operates through dissociation—the mind protecting itself by creating distance between the self and unbearable experience.
In Waltz with Bashir, Folman discovers that his beautiful, ethereal memory of bathing nude in the Mediterranean while golden flares light the Beirut sky is false; in reality, he was part of a team shooting those flares to facilitate the Sabra and Shatila massacres. Memory, as the film’s psychologist explains, is “dynamic…alive. If some details are missing, memory fills the hole with things that never happened.”
Ron’s Geller operates in the same dissociated space. A decorated officer from an elite combat unit, he stalks Tel Aviv’s underbelly to feed his heroin addiction, living with other junkies in a squat. He is haunted by visceral memories of comrades burning alive in an armored personnel carrier during a Gaza campaign. But he also fixates on a dog, cruelly killed during combat operations, a dog whose death becomes a stand-in for all the deaths he cannot mourn directly. When a stray dog crosses his path, Geller desperately attempts to care for it despite struggling to feed himself. The dog becomes both a tether to life and a route back to buried memory.
What makes Ron’s novella extraordinary is its unflinching honesty about the moral dimensions of trauma. This is not just PTSD as medical condition, though Ron, drawing on his own experience, renders the mechanisms of extreme stress and rewiring of the brain with clinical precision. This is moral injury, the wound that comes from what one has done, not just what one has seen. Geller muses bitterly about his father, comatose in a hospital, “connected to his drip irrigation system like a hydroponic plant”: “I know that if he were conscious he’d show me the way out of drugs. Sometimes I hate him for all the poison he’d fed me over the years about the commandos, his stories about the First Lebanon War, the conquering of the Beaufort. He bottle-fed me Golani lore…I had no choice but to grow up to fill his shoes.”
Here Geller becomes a surrogate for generations of Israeli youth, raised on an idealization of militarism and self-sacrifice in pursuit of nationalist goals. The book’s most challenging passage confronts this directly: “I started crying over Yehoram and the other dead soldiers and those damn Arabs we were forced to kill when we flattened their homes with D9s and blew them up with missiles and ruined their messed-up lives.” The passive construction—“we were forced to kill”—sits uneasily against the active verbs: “flattened,” “blew them up,” “ruined.” Ron doesn’t resolve this tension. He allows Geller to mourn both his fellow soldiers and the dog killed in Gaza: “I remembered his eyes, a deep black surrounded by yellowish brown. They were the kindest eyes I’d ever seen…instead of helping him, instead of petting him and rubbing his belly and scratching behind his ears, Yuval cocked his Glock and shot him in the head, that son of a bitch, and then kicked him too, as if a bullet to the head wasn’t enough.”
The dog’s innocence, its fundamental blamelessness, makes it the only death Geller can fully grieve. This is the book’s most powerful insight: sometimes we can only approach the unbearable truth obliquely, through displacement and metaphor.
Though Dog was written before October 7, and published in Hebrew in June 2023, I couldn’t help but read Geller’s story as the story of a whole country. Not as allegory, but as a portrait of what Israeli society has experienced these past two years.
Yardenne Greenspan’s translation is fabulous. The prose forces you into Geller’s dissociated consciousness, where time collapses and Gaza bleeds into Tel Aviv and the past refuses to stay past.
Ron dedicates the book to “combatants whose eyes have seen things that their minds refuse to forget.” For that reason alone, Dog deserves the widest possible audience. But it is also simply a masterpiece of contemporary war literature, raw, compassionate, unsparing, and ultimately about the possibility of redemption through the simplest of connections: the bond between a broken man and a stray dog.
I am shattered. It was a devastating read. Time now to take a break and do some work of my own.
What comes first to mind is Ari Folman’s film Waltz with Bashir, the 2008 animated documentary about the 1982 Lebanon War, built from false memories, traumatic flashbacks, and the impossible work of reconstructing what the mind refuses to remember. Like Folman’s film, Dog centers on trauma, moral injury, memory, and living with the unthinkable.
Both works understand that trauma operates through dissociation—the mind protecting itself by creating distance between the self and unbearable experience.
In Waltz with Bashir, Folman discovers that his beautiful, ethereal memory of bathing nude in the Mediterranean while golden flares light the Beirut sky is false; in reality, he was part of a team shooting those flares to facilitate the Sabra and Shatila massacres. Memory, as the film’s psychologist explains, is “dynamic…alive. If some details are missing, memory fills the hole with things that never happened.”
Ron’s Geller operates in the same dissociated space. A decorated officer from an elite combat unit, he stalks Tel Aviv’s underbelly to feed his heroin addiction, living with other junkies in a squat. He is haunted by visceral memories of comrades burning alive in an armored personnel carrier during a Gaza campaign. But he also fixates on a dog, cruelly killed during combat operations, a dog whose death becomes a stand-in for all the deaths he cannot mourn directly. When a stray dog crosses his path, Geller desperately attempts to care for it despite struggling to feed himself. The dog becomes both a tether to life and a route back to buried memory.
What makes Ron’s novella extraordinary is its unflinching honesty about the moral dimensions of trauma. This is not just PTSD as medical condition, though Ron, drawing on his own experience, renders the mechanisms of extreme stress and rewiring of the brain with clinical precision. This is moral injury, the wound that comes from what one has done, not just what one has seen. Geller muses bitterly about his father, comatose in a hospital, “connected to his drip irrigation system like a hydroponic plant”: “I know that if he were conscious he’d show me the way out of drugs. Sometimes I hate him for all the poison he’d fed me over the years about the commandos, his stories about the First Lebanon War, the conquering of the Beaufort. He bottle-fed me Golani lore…I had no choice but to grow up to fill his shoes.”
Here Geller becomes a surrogate for generations of Israeli youth, raised on an idealization of militarism and self-sacrifice in pursuit of nationalist goals. The book’s most challenging passage confronts this directly: “I started crying over Yehoram and the other dead soldiers and those damn Arabs we were forced to kill when we flattened their homes with D9s and blew them up with missiles and ruined their messed-up lives.” The passive construction—“we were forced to kill”—sits uneasily against the active verbs: “flattened,” “blew them up,” “ruined.” Ron doesn’t resolve this tension. He allows Geller to mourn both his fellow soldiers and the dog killed in Gaza: “I remembered his eyes, a deep black surrounded by yellowish brown. They were the kindest eyes I’d ever seen…instead of helping him, instead of petting him and rubbing his belly and scratching behind his ears, Yuval cocked his Glock and shot him in the head, that son of a bitch, and then kicked him too, as if a bullet to the head wasn’t enough.”
The dog’s innocence, its fundamental blamelessness, makes it the only death Geller can fully grieve. This is the book’s most powerful insight: sometimes we can only approach the unbearable truth obliquely, through displacement and metaphor.
Though Dog was written before October 7, and published in Hebrew in June 2023, I couldn’t help but read Geller’s story as the story of a whole country. Not as allegory, but as a portrait of what Israeli society has experienced these past two years.
Yardenne Greenspan’s translation is fabulous. The prose forces you into Geller’s dissociated consciousness, where time collapses and Gaza bleeds into Tel Aviv and the past refuses to stay past.
Ron dedicates the book to “combatants whose eyes have seen things that their minds refuse to forget.” For that reason alone, Dog deserves the widest possible audience. But it is also simply a masterpiece of contemporary war literature, raw, compassionate, unsparing, and ultimately about the possibility of redemption through the simplest of connections: the bond between a broken man and a stray dog.
I am shattered. It was a devastating read. Time now to take a break and do some work of my own.
June 18, 2025
DOG is an unfiltered story about PTSD, familial turmoil, homelessness and heroin addiction among other universal themes. It follows a former Israeli elite soldier as he descends into heroin-infused chaos after his deployment in Gaza. Struggling to reconcile with his violent past, he ends up in a moldy squat in Tel Aviv with fellow outcasts and junkies.
The book's protagonist adopts the name Geller in a nod to spoon-bending illusionist Uri Geller, and wears a spoon around his neck like a talisman. It’s a recurring motif with Geller fixated on bending the spoon with his mind much to the amusement of his fellow junkies. There's quite a bit of pathos in the interactions between the junkies.
The narrative alternates surprisingly smoothly between omniscient and a visceral, first-person voice.
DOG's stark depictions of heroin withdrawal and the inner turmoil that ensues is moving, and each time Geller craves his next fix, it brought back associations of Beautiful Drug (Thievery Corporation).
“You are the drug in my veins/ And I'm waiting to feel it again, again”
Also, Geller’s internal monologue is startlingly lucid, and his observations, even poetic at times. He befriends the eponymous adorable stray, DOG, and is then befriended by Doris, a lonely middle-aged woman who offers him unexpected kindness and shelter.
A standout moment for me is when a filthy, worn out Geller accepts a meal invitation at Doris’ home and she wastes no time cutting to the chase asking “how one goes from Commando officer to street dweller and drug user.” Geller recognizes this dynamic instantly: people welcome you into their homes, offer food, and then go hammer and tongs with questions they’d never dare ask in neutral territory. The unspoken life lesson here: be careful where you eat at, you’ll be expected to trade pieces of yourself in return for the food.
DOG ends on a redemptive note as Geller’s former commander promises that the unit will stand by him “because brothers help each other out.” Yet, a final twist leaves the reading wondering if Geller was ever a reliable narrator?
A larger question looms - can combat trauma distort ones memories to the extent of extreme disassociation and even projection?
Thank you NetGalley for the ARC copy.
The book's protagonist adopts the name Geller in a nod to spoon-bending illusionist Uri Geller, and wears a spoon around his neck like a talisman. It’s a recurring motif with Geller fixated on bending the spoon with his mind much to the amusement of his fellow junkies. There's quite a bit of pathos in the interactions between the junkies.
The narrative alternates surprisingly smoothly between omniscient and a visceral, first-person voice.
DOG's stark depictions of heroin withdrawal and the inner turmoil that ensues is moving, and each time Geller craves his next fix, it brought back associations of Beautiful Drug (Thievery Corporation).
“You are the drug in my veins/ And I'm waiting to feel it again, again”
Also, Geller’s internal monologue is startlingly lucid, and his observations, even poetic at times. He befriends the eponymous adorable stray, DOG, and is then befriended by Doris, a lonely middle-aged woman who offers him unexpected kindness and shelter.
A standout moment for me is when a filthy, worn out Geller accepts a meal invitation at Doris’ home and she wastes no time cutting to the chase asking “how one goes from Commando officer to street dweller and drug user.” Geller recognizes this dynamic instantly: people welcome you into their homes, offer food, and then go hammer and tongs with questions they’d never dare ask in neutral territory. The unspoken life lesson here: be careful where you eat at, you’ll be expected to trade pieces of yourself in return for the food.
DOG ends on a redemptive note as Geller’s former commander promises that the unit will stand by him “because brothers help each other out.” Yet, a final twist leaves the reading wondering if Geller was ever a reliable narrator?
A larger question looms - can combat trauma distort ones memories to the extent of extreme disassociation and even projection?
Thank you NetGalley for the ARC copy.
November 2, 2025
Dog is a story about a PTSD (Post Trauma Stress Disorder) Israeli veteran who has crumpled into a homeless heroin junkie addict because of his illness. It is a short novel which vividly describes the war he experienced in Gaza as well as all the insignificant occurrences which trigger his reliving the anguish he went through as a commando soldier. The protagonist also describes explicit scenes of his heroin addiction, his need for the next fix and how it alleviates his PTSD as well as his efficiency of shooting up from his days as a combat medic where he "can find a spot with my eyes closed, from back in the days when the battalion sent me to medic training."
We are introduced to Barak (renamed Geller in his homeless environment) with some history of his life after his discharge. PTSD does not immediately affect its victims the moment of discharge. But can creep up on them as they try and reinsert themselves into a daily life. Although the narrative is repetitive, as Geller is constantly reliving his war memories from any different trigger in his daily existence, it is eye-opening and informative into how PTSD inhibits its victims from leading a 'normal' life. The novel ends on a positive note, despite the depth of trouble the Geller has encountered with the message that the step towards returning to normalcy transpire if the motivation comes from within.
This is a must read for anyone who wants an inside non-medical view of PTSD. It is a dismal account of how the institutions which push the soldiers into combat do little to administer to their needs after they are discharged.
We are introduced to Barak (renamed Geller in his homeless environment) with some history of his life after his discharge. PTSD does not immediately affect its victims the moment of discharge. But can creep up on them as they try and reinsert themselves into a daily life. Although the narrative is repetitive, as Geller is constantly reliving his war memories from any different trigger in his daily existence, it is eye-opening and informative into how PTSD inhibits its victims from leading a 'normal' life. The novel ends on a positive note, despite the depth of trouble the Geller has encountered with the message that the step towards returning to normalcy transpire if the motivation comes from within.
This is a must read for anyone who wants an inside non-medical view of PTSD. It is a dismal account of how the institutions which push the soldiers into combat do little to administer to their needs after they are discharged.
January 30, 2026
An exploration of the search for meaning after the wreckage of war, told through the eyes of an Israeli combat officer returning from Gaza. Haunted by trauma, he spirals into heroin addiction, finding himself among Tel Aviv’s community of misfit junkies, until a stray dog enters his life and becomes a beacon of hope, guiding him through a transformative journey marked by despair, resilience, and ultimately hope for salvation. DOG offers a raw and immersive examination of PTSD’s mechanisms - how extreme stress, moral injury, and the experience of combat can rewire the brain, making a return to civilian life seem nearly impossible.
This book was a difficult read for me. The gritty and brutal narrative deals with the brutality of war and its lingering effects on a soldier's psyche. It painfully depicts a lack of support for soldiers on their return home and how their lives spiral downward as a result of their experiences. Despite its short pages, it is a powerful story which manages to get into the head of a broken soldier, now homeless and living with addiction, with parts of the story told in flashbacks. The author manages to create empathetic characters, despite their circumstances. A moving and uncomfortable read ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Thank you @netgalley and @soncatspress for the opportunity to read and review this book.
This book was a difficult read for me. The gritty and brutal narrative deals with the brutality of war and its lingering effects on a soldier's psyche. It painfully depicts a lack of support for soldiers on their return home and how their lives spiral downward as a result of their experiences. Despite its short pages, it is a powerful story which manages to get into the head of a broken soldier, now homeless and living with addiction, with parts of the story told in flashbacks. The author manages to create empathetic characters, despite their circumstances. A moving and uncomfortable read ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Thank you @netgalley and @soncatspress for the opportunity to read and review this book.
September 3, 2026
Five stars. Dog by Yishay Ishi Ron is a great book, and it has some of the best writing I’ve come across. The sentence structure, the word choices, everything about the prose is remarkable, and Yardenne Greenspan’s translation reads beautifully. I listened to the audiobook, and it felt like such a gritty, authentic experience of being inside this character’s mind.
My one critique is that, by the end, I wanted a little more development from the other characters, particularly Dog and Doris. We’re deep inside the mind of a junkie, so it makes sense that Geller’s relationships feel distant and underdeveloped. He’s so closed off that anything more intimate probably wouldn’t have felt honest to the character. Still, I found myself wanting more of that relational dimension. With Doris especially, I wanted to understand more of her trauma. There’s a conversation between them that opens the door to this, and I kept wanting them to go further. At the same time, I understand why they couldn’t. Geller is simply too closed off and consumed by his own trauma to really see hers yet.
Even so, this is one of the most refreshing dark books I’ve read. I haven’t come across many novels that hit this hard on PTSD, war, addiction, and trauma without feeling contrived. It’s brutal, deeply human, and an excellent book.
My one critique is that, by the end, I wanted a little more development from the other characters, particularly Dog and Doris. We’re deep inside the mind of a junkie, so it makes sense that Geller’s relationships feel distant and underdeveloped. He’s so closed off that anything more intimate probably wouldn’t have felt honest to the character. Still, I found myself wanting more of that relational dimension. With Doris especially, I wanted to understand more of her trauma. There’s a conversation between them that opens the door to this, and I kept wanting them to go further. At the same time, I understand why they couldn’t. Geller is simply too closed off and consumed by his own trauma to really see hers yet.
Even so, this is one of the most refreshing dark books I’ve read. I haven’t come across many novels that hit this hard on PTSD, war, addiction, and trauma without feeling contrived. It’s brutal, deeply human, and an excellent book.
June 3, 2026
I don’t read a lot of translated fiction but this book was both heartfelt and heartbreaking. Dog is a story of PTSD and how that can change someone’s life trajectory.
Set in Tel Aviv, we meet the main character- known only as Geller (because of his love of Uri Geller) is an ex soldier, suffering from PTSD after witnessing a dog killed whilst in the line of duty.
He’s now a heroin addict.
When he finds a dog- who he names Dog, and meets a woman called Doris, his life takes a change.
Despite the heavy themes this book is written in a way that makes it really easy to read so it didn’t take me long to finish it!
I actually really liked this book. I liked the perspectives of Geller and Dog respectively.
From the flashbacks to the main story there’s plenty to get emotional about and you can understand as a reader why Geller is the way he is.
I really liked Doris as a character. She’s not judgemental, she cares and she’s just a genuinely decent human being.
We need more people like Doris!
I won’t spoil the ending but I didn’t expect it to take the turn it did.
A really good read!
4/5 stars.
Set in Tel Aviv, we meet the main character- known only as Geller (because of his love of Uri Geller) is an ex soldier, suffering from PTSD after witnessing a dog killed whilst in the line of duty.
He’s now a heroin addict.
When he finds a dog- who he names Dog, and meets a woman called Doris, his life takes a change.
Despite the heavy themes this book is written in a way that makes it really easy to read so it didn’t take me long to finish it!
I actually really liked this book. I liked the perspectives of Geller and Dog respectively.
From the flashbacks to the main story there’s plenty to get emotional about and you can understand as a reader why Geller is the way he is.
I really liked Doris as a character. She’s not judgemental, she cares and she’s just a genuinely decent human being.
We need more people like Doris!
I won’t spoil the ending but I didn’t expect it to take the turn it did.
A really good read!
4/5 stars.
June 26, 2025
I am assuming there are trigger warnings on this book, if there aren't here They are, PTSD totally screws up this guy's life with drugs. It happens to way too often to soldiers. It doesn't matter what branch of military, what country you are from. This is something that happens to everyone who sees war. It does not care what race creed or religious belief you hold dear. PTSD and drug abuse is the worst thing on the planet. That all branches of the military in all the world ignore and don't treat enough. And the way these officers gaslit, this person happens far too often, because officers are allowed to lie to you. And here, I thought they were supposed to be looking for the truth. So yeah, if you have ever been in more or suffered from addiction. Or still suffer from of addiction. This might be a little much, but it is very well written a lot of emotion, is put into every single page. The translator did a fantastic job and the narrator for the audiobook. Absolutely headed out of the park with the emotion that he put into his voice.
November 1, 2025
Dog - The Humanity within to survive PTSD
Yishay Ishi Ron has captured the essence of war and PTSD through a brilliantly written novel that is already a classic. When I heard a podcast interview by Danny Gordis of Ishi, I immediately associated to Adam Ben Kalev by Yoram Kaniuk where trauma lurked in every page but narrative far exceeds Kaniuk’s in describing the interior life of living with PTSD. I say this as someone who helped write the guide lines for Traumatic Stress Studies back in 2004. Kaniuk was the Shoah, Ishi is the IDF, the legal system and Gaza. He captures the pain as well as a kind of unique hopefulness and by this I don’t mean resilience which I feel is totally over estimated and seldom understood. The book explains why.
Yishay Ishi Ron has captured the essence of war and PTSD through a brilliantly written novel that is already a classic. When I heard a podcast interview by Danny Gordis of Ishi, I immediately associated to Adam Ben Kalev by Yoram Kaniuk where trauma lurked in every page but narrative far exceeds Kaniuk’s in describing the interior life of living with PTSD. I say this as someone who helped write the guide lines for Traumatic Stress Studies back in 2004. Kaniuk was the Shoah, Ishi is the IDF, the legal system and Gaza. He captures the pain as well as a kind of unique hopefulness and by this I don’t mean resilience which I feel is totally over estimated and seldom understood. The book explains why.
March 22, 2026
Earlier today I picked up the book Dog by Yishay Ishi Ron which isn’t very well known, though it should be! Though it’s a quick read it tells a powerful story through the experience of “Geller,” a former combat soldier suffering from PTSD, and survivor guilt, trying to put himself back together after all that he experienced. Though he was recognized with a prestigious award for his bravery and courage in a battle which took the lives of his friends, his PTSD and survivor guilt lead him towards addiction. In addiction he encounters a Dog with whom he forms a strong bond, and who ultimately plays a key role in helping Geller make it out of a situation in which his life was on the precipice of defeat. It was a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ read for me and I highly encourage everyone to read it.
January 4, 2026
This short, powerful story captures the trauma and post-trauma of an elite IDF commando who has become broken down, homeless, and addicted to heroin. His tentative friendship with a caring stranger grows from their mutual affection for a sweet dog. The plot is terrifying, both in Geller’s flashbacks of wartime scenarios and his current existence in sordid settings with unsavory characters, but ends sweetly with hope for a better future. The author ties it up so well with the dog being both the symbol of his wartime separation of body and soul, and the embodiment of a guileless loyalty, often impossible to find among humans. I’m looking forward to Ron’s next work.
February 24, 2026
DOG is about an elite combat soldier who returns from Gaza with post-traumatic stress disorder. As Geller sinks deeper into heroin addiction, he has only a stray dog for warmth and lives on a vacant lot surrounded by filth and other addicts. After meeting Doris, a kind woman who also suffers from PTSD, Geller decides to get clean, but only after one last heroin hurrah. When he wakes up, he’s covered in blood, accused of murder, and forced to undergo a painful withdrawal. But he doesn’t remember a thing in this stunning novel about PTSD, addiction, kindness, and hope.
#podcast https://newbooksnetwork.com/yishay-is...
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May 24, 2026
A short novel infused with truth and experiences from the author's life. it tells the story of a retired Israeli commando officer suffering form PTSD who seeks comfort in the arms of heroin addiction. It is a grueling journey clearly written by one who has traveled this harrowing path through a living hell. The book is honest, brutal and heartfelt. We see the extreme pain and suffering, but also the redemptive value of connection with people (and a dog) who can provide lifelines to a better place.
August 15, 2026
Thank you to Yishay Ishi Ron, Good Reading Mag and Ginninderra Press for the signed copy of Dog!
This was not an easy read. It is fiction, however the story sits close to the author's own lived experience of PTSD, addiction and homelessness, as an Israeli combat trauma survivor.
I nearly had to put the book down a couple of times, because of character Dog, but I stuck with it and tried not to think about the storyline too deeply.
This was not an easy read. It is fiction, however the story sits close to the author's own lived experience of PTSD, addiction and homelessness, as an Israeli combat trauma survivor.
I nearly had to put the book down a couple of times, because of character Dog, but I stuck with it and tried not to think about the storyline too deeply.
July 6, 2026
This was a raw, emotional story told from the perspective of a former Israeli soldier with PTSD and a few chapters from Dog’s POV. The writing was so good and the narration brought the story to life. I’m not sure if it would have had the same impact in print form, so I’m glad I chose the audio format.
December 31, 2025
This is a very difficult book to read. i won’t go into the plot you can read the blurb, but suffice to say you are inside the head of combat soldier who becomes a heroin addict and has untreated PTSD/combat fatigue.
May 21, 2026
Powerful writing; Ron deals with addiction and PTSD from a decorated soldier’s point of view. The subject matter is, at times, hard to read, but the story and writing keep you reading until the end. He also shows the power of hope and connection to bring people out of their darkest selves.
June 1, 2026
This book is gripping, painful and deeply humane. I really felt like I was inside the character's psyche, understanding his addiction and the internal anguish it served to soothe, if only momentarily. War is hell, and we all have shadows, and this book reveals ourselves to ourselves.
July 17, 2025
This book hits hard.
Contemplative, compassion, empathy, humanity.
I am not a solider, nor a junkie- but to understand the struggle from words on the page, THAT is talent.
Contemplative, compassion, empathy, humanity.
I am not a solider, nor a junkie- but to understand the struggle from words on the page, THAT is talent.
November 1, 2025
Quick read with a major punch. The impact of PTSD on an IDF soldier. Author’s note says this is highly autobiographical. Tragic, from every angle. Important book, no doubt.
November 25, 2025
A beautiful work of literature.
March 21, 2026
wow, extremely impactful and relevant💔 belongs alongside other war classics like ‘the things they carried’
March 21, 2026
Painful to read and yet, beautiful and profound.
May 17, 2026
Finished in one day. Raw. Honest. Emotional. Painful at times to read. Such beautiful, poetic writing I had to stop and reread lines out loud. And that was the translation!
June 9, 2026
Important book about an IDF soldier and a dog.
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