Revenge : A Love Story - Softcover

Laura Blumenfeld

3.72

306 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0330493604 ISBN 13: 9780330493604

Publisher: Picador, 2003

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'Should be required reading at the White House' - "Guardian". In Jerusalem 1986, a member of a rebel faction of the PLO shot Laura Blumenfeld's father. He survived, but Blumenfeld was haunted by a desire for revenge. Travelling across Europe, the United States and the Middle East, Blumenfeld talked to Yitzhak Rabin's assassin, members of the Albanian Blood Feud Committee, the chief of the Iranian judiciary, the mayor of Palermo, an Egyptian heroin smuggler, the Israeli prime minister and the military chief of staff - as well as priests, prostitutes, sports fans and schoolgirls. Her aim was seemingly simple: to understand the mechanics and the psychology of vengeance. Ultimately, however, her journey led her home, where she found herself forced to confront her childhood, her parents' failed marriage and her ideas about family. In the end, her target turned out to be more complex - and in some ways more threatening - than the stereotypical terrorist she had long imagined. 'Her work is really two books. First, it is a personal account of her own desire for revenge on the man who hurt her father and how she resolved this issue. Second, it is a journalistic exploration of the motivation and mechanisms for revenge across the globe' - "Scotsman". 'Compelling ...This is an intelligent and genuinely optimistic book' - "Daily Mail'.

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Review:

In 1986, a Palestinian terrorist shot author Laura Blumenfeld’s father. More than a decade later, Blumenfeld, a reporter for The Washington Post, decided to find the man who tried to kill her dad; she also wanted to learn about vengeance. “I was looking for the shooter, but I also was looking for some kind of wisdom,” she writes. “I wanted to master revenge.” Blumenfeld interviews a variety of people, from religious figures to assassins, about the meaning of revenge. The heart of the book, though, is her own journey to find the man who pulled the trigger. First she locates his family and learns vivid details about his life--he was a standout in his public-relations course at the University of Bethlehem. Blumenfeld’s own emotions aren’t far from the surface of this narrative. When she meets the shooter’s own father, for instance, she asks herself: “Am I supposed to shoot him now?” Finally she begins a creepy correspondence with the gunman, who is in prison. Their letters back and forth are oddly compelling--at first the shooter doesn’t know her real identity, though she eventually reveals it. In the end, Blumenfeld says her quest helped her find hope in a dangerous world, even as the final words of her book reflect upon September 11 and its immediate aftermath, when so many other Americans longed for their own vengeance. --John Miller

About the Author:

Laura Blumenfeld has been a staff writer at the Washington Post since 1992. She lives in New York City.

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