Limassol

Yishai Sarid studied law at the Hebrew University of Jersualem and received a graduate degree in public administration from Harvard University. He works as an attorney and a journalist for the Hebrew press. Limassol is his second novel.

Barbara Harshav 's translations from Hebrew include works by prominent authors such as Michael Govrin, Yehudah Amihai, Meir Shalev, and Nobel Laureate S.Y. Agnon. She teaches at Yale University.

A high-ranking official in the Israeli secret service is handed a new brief: go undercover as an aspiring novelist to befriend Daphna, an Israeli writer, and her friend Hani, a renowned Palestinian poet. The target is Hani's son Yotam, a wanted terrorist leader. As the agent becomes ingrained in Daphna and Hani's lives, his own sense of right and wrong is clouded. The writers have awoken new feelings, yet his sense of duty remains. At the final moment he must choose between his professional loyalties and the long dormant feelings his new friendships have awoken.

This timely and morally complex novel tells the story of a conflicted Israeli secret service agent. An expert interrogator, a connoisseur of persuasive methods - legal and otherwise - he never fails to make his subjects talk. But when two prisoners die in his custody his superiors suggest a temporary reassignment. Begrudgingly, he accepts his new mission: go undercover, posing as an aspiring novelist, and befriend Daphna, an Israeli writer, and her ailing friend Hani, a renowned Palestinian poet. The target of his assignment is Hani's son Yotam, a wanted terrorist leader. As the writer's friendship begins to awaken feelings he thought long dead, his own well-entrenched sense of right and wrong is clouded. But the habits of a lifetime in the military propel him to continue his deceptions and lay his trap for Yotam. Playing upon a dying man's sentiments, he convinces the elderly poet to arrange a meeting with his son in Limassol, a Cypriot town where the Israelis lie in wait to eliminate their target. As the intrigue and tension mount, the agent will be forced to choose between his professional obligations and his newfound loyalties.