Vulture

Incisive, droll, fast-paced and gripping, Vulture throws its reader into the heart of the conflict in the Middle East.

Sara is an ambitious and entitled young journalist, who has been sent to join the press pack at the Beach Hotel on the Gaza Strip. The hotel promises safety, luxury, and vital news and information for the overseas journalists residing there. Sara is desperate to make her name as a crack reporter and relies heavily on support both from the hotel staff--Mohammed, who works the reception desk, Jihad, and his son Little Jihad--from her recalcitrant fixer, Nasser, and from the shady Fadi, a young man with possible connections to Hamas.

All advise caution in this complex theatre of war, but Sara, driven by the demons and disappointments of her recent past will stop at nothing to find "the story"--even if it means bringing disaster upon those around her.

From its world-weary opening to its gut-wrenching final pages, Vulture is a brilliant satire on the contemporary moral blindness of the West and an indictment on the media's rapacious appetite for sensation.