A perfect man is Dr. Etan Grien, 41, does not, however, an upright, liberal citizen, not religious, but with solid morals. That’s why he could not cover more corruption cases on his station at the Central Hospital Tel Aviv. He had to do the right thing: they bring to the display, even if he so his superior, the professor and chief physician, loaded. But no one pulled the culprits to justice. Rather, you got rid of the ‘informers,’ by sending him literally into the desert.
His new workplace: a hospital in the province. The neurosurgeon is suffering in exile. Unemployment, crime, filth in the green areas and above all a layer of powdery dust, the desert wind incessantly about covers everything. The dust hates Etan even more than the residents of this city of Beer Sheva.
The working conditions are unreasonable, overtime rule. So Etan not remain even enough time for his wife Liat and the two sons (6 and 8). Liat is police officer and was also involved in the corruption scandal in Tel Aviv.
Had the matter ended differently if she had been involved more? A certain sense of guilt may have contributed to the gift they indulged Etan as a sop to the involuntary relocation.
This constellation of circumstances – not nice, but not unbearable – plunges the Israeli author Ayelet Gundar-Goshen (born in 1982), their honorable protagonist now in a kind of multi-layered corruption – unexpectedly immoral and intolerable. Exhausted by a nineteen-hour highly concentrated working studied Etan at two o’clock at night a little relaxation by rushing his “armored Mercedes” through the desert, exploits his achievements.
Right in the center he runs over a man. After a brief examination of the irretrievably dying and when done his own rescue options he decides to hit and run. His sacrifice, so he knows is a black Eritreans without a residence permit, an “infiltrator”.
The very next morning Sirkit, the young woman killed in front of Ethan door. She saw the accident and his escape – and found his wallet beside the body of her husband. Tall, slender and very beautiful, Sirkit dictated soon their conditions for Ethan atonement: Not money, but medical care it demands, not for themselves but for their “people” – refugees who take refuge in a hospital who are afraid, interned to be.
Dr. Etan Grien leads from now on two lives. The official over day is hard enough. The secret of the night but his purgatory. On a rusty metal table in a long-abandoned dark workshop he operates which caused sluggish in infinite column sick, patched up their battered on the run, dilapidated bodies, their festering wounds and open infections. He is disgusted by all these humors, the “meat” that smells of “corruption”. For these people, with whom he has no common language other than rudimentary facial expressions and gestures with which they mean to him infinite gratitude, he has a feeling he “hated”. He distinguishes well between the voluntary ethical obligation “to treat everyone,” he has taken through his medical oath on, and monitored the extortion by Sikrit that “Eritrean bitch” and his nemesis, the all his works.
In addition to the physical leaching Etan makes its sell than to create personality. What is left of the student with honors, the elite officer and respected doctor? One who steals drugs in the hospital. One who lies to his wife, is through the problems with constant excuses. While it wears down self-loathing, hatred grows forced patients to him and especially the black woman who forces him to process his guilt.
Meanwhile, just Liat processes the fatal car accident with hit and run in the desert. Finally entrusting his wife, which seems Etan less and less possible. Of course, he is keen to remain a husband and father without blemish. But Liat does not dare to question where her husband puts each night, why he can not sleep. could spy on him the beautiful picture endanger an exemplary marriage, she has always cherished the right and the outside world. The faithful, tolerant partners is a crucial element in this constellation in which they themselves perceive to be a weak point. Cause of their shame is their origin: It comes from Iraq. For a long time they compensate their supposed inferiority by seeking to deny this identity. She has taken off her Iraqi name, let her black body hair epilation and raised cleanliness the measure of all things. If they will never ever be pure, so it should be her home after all.
“Lions wake up” is (translated by Ruth Achlama into German) is a fascinating, multi-layered novel. Primarily, the detective story keeps the reader from the first set to the unexpected conclusion in suspense. How Etan can free himself of his judge and executor of the superior force? Can the police – possibly Liat? – identify the accident fugitives? An honor killing and the dark workings of a drug gang widen the initial two- or three-person basis. While the external action progresses, revealing flashbacks and reflections from different perspectives on one and the same situation insightful interior views. The author – a studied psychologist with considerable experience in dealing with patients and also with remarkable literary talent – convincingly developed the complex personality structures of its protagonists Ethan Sirkit and Liat, all ambivalent, down to the deepest torn characters. Behind Sirkits facade of a haughty, aristocratic “Sphinx” for example, has a miserable life left its mark, it can not suppress, and even though both – Sirkit and Etan – each loathe for good reason, they do expire their mutual broadcasting.
How different truths and critical questions about responsibility and guilt come into play. Such as the doctor would have done if he had approached instead of the Eritrean refugee, a young white girl?
Lions Wake Of Ayelet Gundar-goshen Review. (2019, Nov 18). Retrieved from https://paperap.com/lions-wake-of-ayelet-gundar-goshen-my-review/