After this thrilling intro, the focus shifts from the crisis of the accident to its context and the questions it provokes, and the narrative takes long diversions to meditate on domestic life, privilege, discrimination, international politics, poverty, family dynamics and the conflicting forces that make us who we are. Although the plot continues to move forward, barring a few static scenes, it feels secondary to the ideas Gundar-Goshen wants to explore ... At their best, the philosophical explorations of Waking Lions are thought-provoking. The treatment of otherness is particularly rich as events bring liberal Jew Eitan into close contact with the Eritrean and Bedouin communities ... Yet the fluidity of perspective in the novel, which shifts between various characters’ viewpoints and that of a rather intrusive third-person narrator, sometimes within the same paragraph, is also problematic. While it can create a nice ambiguity, blurring the divide between the self and the other, it also has the side-effect of making characters sound disconcertingly articulate about their self-deceptions.

Waking Lions, in a propulsive translation from Hebrew by Sondra Silverston, yokes a crime story to thorny ethical issues in ways reminiscent of Donna Tartt and Richard Price. Its motor doesn’t always purr—the sections in the middle unpacking Eitan and Liat’s troubled marriage are laborious. But it’s a rare book that can trouble your conscience while holding you in a fine state of suspense.

As a novel, Waking Lions itself is the product of a collision of cultures and genres. Translated from the Hebrew, it's a psychological suspense tale mashed with a social novel about the refugee crisis. Overall, it's vividly imagined, clever, and morally ambiguous, although, occasionally, Gundar-Goshen's plot seems bit contrived. (Eitan's wife, for instance, happens to be the Israeli police detective investigating the hit-and-run accident.) Those lapses, however, mean little in comparison to how deftly Gundar-Goshen complicates her characters here ... a smart and disturbing exploration of the high price of walking away, whether it be from a car accident or from one's own politically unstable homeland.

...the events of the book’s final third more closely resemble those of a police thriller, a far cry from the static space of Eitan’s personal meltdown. This shift in pace is certainly exhilarating, and Gundar-Goshen has previously displayed her rare ability to combine elements from a variety of genres. However, the tone proves slightly problematic. Where One Night, Markovitch was written in sensuous, comic prose, imbued with the generosity of language and storytelling, here the language can feel less assured ... Despite some tonal inconsistencies, this novel proves it’s not every day a writer like this comes our way.

Gundar-Goshen has said that she believes the writer’s job is to force readers to look at what they’d usually avoid. Not short on discomfiting scenes, Waking Lions offers a commentary on privilege and otherness, challenging readers to confront their own blind spots and preconceptions. The themes of visibility and invisibility, of the power dynamics between the observed and the observer, run throughout the narrative ... Trained as a clinical psychologist, Gundar-Goshen examines her characters with the same formidable gaze. Nobody emerges unscathed ... Gundar-Goshen is adept at instilling emotional depth into a thriller plot, delivering the required twists and turns along with an incisive portrayal of her characters’ guilt, shame and desire, fluidly shifting between their perspectives. Although the tension slackens midway through as the narrative becomes burdened with elaborate back stories and lengthy musings, readers will be rewarded by its exhilarating, cinematic finale. Skillfully translated by Sondra Silverston, Waking Lions is a sophisticated and darkly ambitious novel, revealing an aspect of Israeli life rarely seen in its literature.