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From The Observer, Nicci Gerard, 23 June 1991:
Simon Louvish is a bushfire to Wharton’s damp squib; a crackling, deafening contagion of ideas, words, characters. On one level, The Silencer (Bloomsbury, £7.99) is a political thriller – but this is a level quite beyond my reach. Ten different plots seem to have met and quarrelled. Joe Dekel, one time novelist, Israel’s only religious anarchist, and now sent by his paper to cover an Israeli-Palestinian Peace Conference in New York – stumbles into a plot crawling with agents and double agents, all out to get him; when he emerges at the other end, it’s not quite clear how he shook them all off.
On another level, though, it doesn’t much matter. Like a fire The Silencer is bright and fierce. Louvish’s verbal wit, his passionate despair and his love for a country that has continually betrayed his hopes burns the plot to tinder and feeds off it. Read the book not for a story but a voice: a clear, loud, furious denunciation of the madness of our times; ‘the headlong rush into fear and loathing, the soured compassion, the blindfolds, the suspicion and terror, the trickle-down greed of the political classes.’
Call Me Schlemiel – Bryan Cheyette in the New Statesman, 28 June 1991:
Simon Louvish's sixth novel, "another Levantine tale", is dedicated to the Palestinian writer, Abbas Shiblak, who has "lived through the real thing". Shiblak, it should be remembered, was detained in Pentonville prison during the Gulf war and threat ened with deportation on the grounds of "national security".
At his "hearing", Louvish was the official "Friend of Shiblak". He could be forgiven for thinking that his fiction had come alive as he watched Shiblak – his fellow mustachioed expat – attempt to convince the Three Wise Men that he had not been a Palestinian terrorist for the past 17 years. What Louvish witnessed turned out to be uncannily like the plot of his alreadywritten political thriller, The Silencer.
Since leaving Israel for London in 1968, Louvish has been married to his vision of a Middle East where Israelis and Palestinians are able to live peacefully together. The Silencer is a sequel to his second novel, The Death of Moishe-Ganef (1986), and continues the tribulations of Joe Dekel, his anarcho-religious hero. Dekel, now an Israeli journalist, has also written a novel called The Death of Moise-Ganef, which has been "silenced" in the US by a far-right blacklister. After meeting his "silencer" ata conference on Jewish-Palestinian peace in New York, the "certified paranoid" Dekel finds himself (not just in his darkest imaginings) the object of various state security apparatuses.
From these humble beginnings, Louvish constructs a plot of such labyrinthine proportions that it makes le Carre read like a recipe for making chopped liver. Dekel discovers a body in Manhattan – "man hat on", in Louvish speak – whose dying words prove too be the clue to an attempt by a fanatical group of Arnerican Christian fundamentalists to destabilise the Middle East. Louvish's schlemiel protagonist begins to wilt under the violent gaze of a series of bizarre competing interests: apocalyptic Christians, the FBI, Mossad, and extreme Israeli nationalists.
Unwittingly thrown into the maelstrom of Levantine politics, Dekel thinks of himself as "an old ragged whore. The ebb and flow of the traumas of my battered country, the blistering, jagged, sandy winds of circumstance have carved their marks on my soul." It is this painful sense of helplessness in the face of insuperable odds – and not merely the rather tortuous plot-line, that makes The Silencer worth reading.
Louvish is particularly good at exploiting the staple questions of any thriller-"Who is the murderer? Who is blamed? For what?" – to show their geopolitical implications. Using his fluent Hebrew, he also neatly incorporates actual Israeli newspaper headlines into his fiction. Although they might appear completely insane to the outsider, they are, in fact, genuine. In this, he managed to beat the Pope to the punch with "ABORTIONS--TIE NEW HOLOCAUST”.
His meeting of the Israeli military, Lebanese phalangists and fundamentalist Christians in Lebanon also severely tests the reader's lunacy threshold. As Dekel finally realises, "the awful truth: we had not been paranoid enough". For fully fledged paranoia, read Louvish's Blok trilogy. But, for the British reader innocent of the minutiae of Middle Eastern madness, The Silencer will be more than enough.The New York Times Book Review: Spies & Thrillers, by Newgate Callendar, June 27, 1993;
Some books are next to impossible to categorize. Espionage plays a part in THE SILENCER, by the Glasgow-born Israeli author Simon Louvish (Interlink Books/ Interlink Publishing, cloth, $24.95; paper; $10.95), and so do satire, humor, political analysis, Israeli-Arab relationships, the meaning of Jewishness, the terrors of religious fanaticism (Israeli as well as Arab), Realpolitik, Surrealism - you name it.
One other aspect of this unusual novel - it is brilliantly written. When Mr. Louvish writes, he stings. On a meeting in New York between prominent Jews and Arabs: "Mortal enemies had sat together and yodeled. The lion and the lamb, et cetera, though it was more like a reunion of geriatric vultures, who have nothing left but each other to feed on." The author cannot resist puns. Of an art show: "Kitschland eiber alles." About certain acts in the book committed by Israeli internal security: "Now, as we all know, it is squeaky clean and watertight, apart from the... revelations about torture in interrogation ... but how can you make an omelet without breaking legs?"
The antihero of this book is an Israeli journalist named Joe Dekel. At the New York meeting he is approached by a mysterious figure who calls himself the Silencer. It is his job to see that Dekel’s books will never be published in the United States. Dekel is too liberal, too critical of his fellow Jews. Indeed, he is a traitor.
Dekel, by happenstance, is the sole witness to the East Side murder of a noted Jewish community leader. He is grilled by an F.B.I. man who quotes extensively from Lewis Carroll (in fact, there is an "Alice in Wonderland" quality throughout the entire book). Back in Israel he is - for reasons he cannot comprehend - caught in the middle of a conflict between the ultraright and liberals. At the end there is a lengthy, complicated explanation.
But explanations are not always answers. Dekei and his wife await the birth of their first child: "In a short while. God bless, there will be a new voice; asking questions, probing; protesting, grumbling, griping, nagging, noodging, carping, complaining and criticizing, refusing to take no for an answer.” The Joe Dekels ofthis world will never give up. "Unplug your ears; and let the cries all echo,” he exclaims. "Just let them know you're not having it. Don't ever let time run out!"(The Silencer was marked as one of the New York Times “Notable Books of the Year” in the December 5, 1993 issue of the New York Times Book Review.)
Manhattan Jewish Sentinel, Morton I. Teicher, November 17, 1993:
The split between Israeli “peaceniks” and those who are determined to hold onto Judea and Samaria is exploited fully in this madcap thriller. Right-wing fundamentalists vie with "Peace Now" types to produce deadly adventures that are described with a light touch.
As the scene of the novel hurtles from New York to Israel to Utah to Arizona and back to Israel, dreams mingle confusedly with reality. The continuing thread is held by Joseph Dekel, an Israeli TV critic, whose life changes when he is assigned to cover an unofficial conference of Israelis and Palestinians who are supposedly interested in peace. The author unnecessarily adds to the confusion by saying that the meeting is held at New York University but then provides details about the Columbia University neighborhood.
Satirical characterizations- of the participants in the "peace conference" lampoon both Israelis and Arabs even though the author is clearly sympathetic to the Israelis. His attitudes are forthrightly expressed when, without mentioning names, he derogatorily refers to two Israeli government leaders as a terrorist and an alcoholic.
The plot turns on Dekel's, discovering a dying man who utters last words that Dekel misinterprets. Others involved in the intrigue include American religious fundamentalists, Gush Emunim, the FBI and Israel intelligence. The all fear that the dying man betrayed to Dekel the name of an Israeli spy in America. He is severely battered by these groups in their effort to learn what the dying man told him. The alliances and the enmities among these hostile competitors spice the story and lead to its stirring climax.
An unlikely finale has "Old Sandpaper," the name given to Jerusalem's Mayor Teddy Kollek, flying in a helicopter with Dekel to prevent a disastrous attempt to bomb the mosques on Temple Mount.
Dekel’s relationship with his wife and the effort to block him from publishing his pro-Palestinian book round out the story. Throughout, the author succeeds in being funny, turning phrases wittily and manifesting a determined cleverness.
Simon Louvish has written five previous novels and has produced a series of controversial films on South Africa, Greece and Israel: Born in Glasgow, he lived in Jerusalem from the age of two until he was 21 in 1968. He then moved to London to study film-making and he has remained there ever since. Louvish is a firm advocate of peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians; he is active in the campaigns for a political settlement. His new novel is a powerful statement in support of his stance and a painful revelation of the splits among Israelis and between American Jews and Israel.
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