Revenge: A Story of Hope » (Reprint)

Laura Blumenfeld holds a master's degree in international affairs from Columbia University and has been a staff writer at The Washington Post since 1992. She has also written for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and the Los Angeles Times. She lives in Washington, D.C.

In 1986, Laura Blumenfeld's father was shot in Jerusalem by a member of a rebel faction of the PLO, which had been responsible for attacks on foreign tourists in the Old City several of whom were also killed. when the desire for revenge manifested itself in a deeply personal way, Blumenfeld went undercover to find the Palestinian terrorist who injured her father. Along the way, she learned "lessons" in revenge by gathering stories of avengers, assassins, and the people they left behind from around the world, including Sicily, Albania, Iran, Greece, Egypt, Israel, England, and Germany. Combining the suspense and danger of a personal revenge story, and serious international affairs reporting, Revenge: A Story of Hope is a personal and intellectual tour of the human darkness we try to deny

Publishers Weekly

At its heart, this remarkable tale is a rite-of-passage story, an intense and deeply personal journey. For newlywed and successful Washington Post reporter Blumenfeld in 1998, life appeared to be just about perfect. But she had a score to settle. In 1986, the same year her mother declared she wanted a divorce, her father was shot by a Palestinian terrorist while visiting Israel. Fortunately, the young man had poor aim. But the impact on Blumenfeld was dramatic. That year, as a college student, she wrote a poem in which she addressed the shooter: "this hand will find you/ I am his daughter." In 1998, the shooter was released from prison. Blumenfeld saw her chance and grabbed it. She traveled to such places as Bosnia, Sicily and Iran, and interviewed both perpetrators and victims of violence to determine the rituals and rites of revenge. She tracked down and spent hours with the shooter's family, telling them only that she was American journalist working on a book. She and the shooter became pen pals. The book's only flaw, and it's minor, is a sense of detachment, though Blumenfeld is an able and expressive writer and is not sparing when it comes to personal revelations. The climax is astonishingly powerful a masterfully rendered scene, crackling with the intensity of which great, life-changing drama is made. (Apr. 4) Forecast: Needless to say, a book about revenge against terrorism could not be better timed, and aided by powerful writing and an excerpt in the New Yorker, this has bestseller potential. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.