It’s Our Child

Twenty years after Itai`s army service, Avi Razi, his commanding officer, suddenly reappears in his life. Itai would have liked to leave those years behind him, but Razi, calling in an old debt, makes a surprising request: that Itai help him to kidnap his 13-year-old son at his bar mitzvah party. He hopes this way to get closer to the boy who was taken from him as a baby, and to pay back his ex-wife who left him for another man.

The request takes Itai back to a troubling incident during his army days, in which his friend Neta was sexually abused while he stood by. He eventually agrees to help Razi. And from that moment on, until the surprising end of the book, the plot takes a wild turn as the demons from Itai`s past rise up, exposing his unreliable and contradictory character.

The strength of this interesting novel lies in its portrayal of men, particularly in Israel. Although it returns to dusty army bases, it affords us the view of a different masculinity: hesitant, embarrassed and almost helpless against the female power it faces.