Book review: The Lion's Gate, by Steven Pressfield
In his compelling "hybrid history" of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, one of the many voices that combat novelist Steven Pressfield presents is that of Boaz Amitai, a reconnaissance platoon commander in the Israelis' perilous push through the Sinai to the Suez Canal.
by Steven Pressfield
Sentinel
3.5 stars
Tony Perry
In his compelling "hybrid history" of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, one of the many voices that combat novelist Steven Pressfield presents is that of Boaz Amitai, a reconnaissance platoon commander in the Israelis' perilous push through the Sinai to the Suez Canal.
Tens of thousands of Egyptian soldiers - backed by hundreds of Russian-made tanks - are waiting in the Sinai, prepared for the war that Arab leaders have promised would destroy Israel.
Amitai tells Pressfield that as he drives across 10km "of hell", he feels the presence of the Angel of Death, an ominous feeling of war, of dread and adrenalin.
Lion's Gate is the war seen by Israeli pilots who destroyed the Egyptian air force in a preemptive strike, soldiers (such as Amitai) who fought in the Sinai and paratroopers (including Ariel Sharon) who reclaimed Jerusalem from Jordan.
Lion's Gate is part reported history, part novel, what a generation ago was called the "new journalism". Pressfield presents the Israelis' stories as if each of them were speaking in the first person: the prose belongs to Pressfield, but the fear and exhilaration of the known and the unknown belongs to the individual warrior. Each short chapter presents the view of a soldier or aviator, from a general to a foot soldier.