A pun about Gaza based on the sickly neon non-reality television show Ibiza Uncovered.
I’m going to hell.
But look, if you struggle with that, 281 pages of Gaza-based satire is going to be a lot more uncomfortable for you.
Consider it a warning.
But if you have a home address on Nuance Street, read on.
What’s happening in Gaza is terrible. (No nuance there—it just is.)
And for those, like me, who follow these things through the lens of history, it’s been terrible for a long time—arguably long before you or I were born.
Phoebe Greenwood’s Vulture aims to specifically look at what was happening there in 2012.
As a journalist who’s worked as a freelance correspondent in Jerusalem covering the Middle East for the likes of the Guardian, Daily Telegraph, and Sunday Times, it’s fair to say she’s well qualified to do so.
But hold on.
Vulture is not a report, a long-form article, or a John Pilger-esque documentary.
It’s a work of fiction.
Stranger still, its main focus is arguably not the conflict itself but those people covering the conflict: the Western journos—or rather, the vultures: people living off the death and suffering of others.
I hate it when people say things are brave when they’re not. Let’s face it, writing a novel isn’t the greatest act of bravery I can think of. (A stupid, self-ruining act: yes. Brave: no.)
Still, in 2025, to write and publish (fair play to Europa Editions) a satirical novel set in Gaza is, if not brave, certainly bold.
On top of that, with terrible reports of journalists being killed in the current conflict, questioning the efficacy of reporting from such war zones seems like punching a lion after you’ve already woken it from sleep.
It sets the tone for what is a weird and unusual novel.
First, it’s set in 2012, but you obviously can’t help but think of the horrors we’re seeing every day in the news.
Second, the portrayal of the Western journalists covering the conflict is hardly flattering, giving you a sense that your crush on Cathy Newman might be misplaced.
And third, Phoebe’s own fictional stand-in, journalist Sara Byrne, is pretty hard-nosed and, at times, a bit of a dick. Not an anti-hero so much as someone you tend to like despite themselves.
It all makes for an emotional gravitron—similar to an emotional rollercoaster, except instead of emotional ups and downs, it spins around, creating the effect of zero gravity and violently sucking you against a wall in a way that is undeniably uncomfortable.
But gravitrons are fun too, and so is Vulture. (The gravitron was my favourite ride at the late Pleasure Island in Cleethorpes.)
There is sex with a sleazy/stupid Italian photographer.
There is an affair with the husband of the protagonist’s mum’s best friend.
There is a vaginal infection. (These things are all fun, right?)
And did I mention this is all still in Gaza? The same Gaza you see being razed/that has been razed to the ground every night on the news.
The juxtaposition of herpes and Hamas is undoubtedly a strange, sensitive, and potentially dangerous one (hence the right honorable Martin McDonagh calling the novel “brave,” I suppose), but somehow Vulture pulls it off.
Or, at least, it seems to shake off the need to pull it off and is content to develop in its own merrily unhinged way, regardless of what you think it should or should not be doing.
Sara’s illness, both physical and mental, spirals out of control to the point she believes she’s being visited by her dead father in the Freudian form of an overly critical and Latin-speaking bird. (Yep, we’re still in Gaza.)
You begin to wonder if it’s all a grand metaphor for the effect war has on a person...
Or is this the modern social-media age equivalent of Michael Herr’s Dispatches?
Or is it a comment on the Western media’s obsession with war coverage a la The Day Today’s “It’s war!” skit?
Or wait…
What if it is just a writer making something up, like writers are supposed to do, probably based on some terrible break-up or unresolved childhood trauma? Hmm. That’s possible too.
Or is it all of these things?
And of course, at some point that’s what fiction is. It’s why we write novels. So we can deal with our own personal trauma and offer thoughts and reflections on the broader traumas of our age, regardless of how sensitive and challenging they might be.
To that extent, Vulture is not a piece of non-fiction—it is a darkly comic novel that happens to be set in Gaza and is pretty good at doing all the things you’d expect a darkly comic novel that happens to be set in Gaza to do.
It’s weird. A bit uncomfortable. And a bit mad.
In my opinion, that’s a good thing.
My recommendation: Read it if only to justify your sense that there really is very little point in quite that many Western journalists reporting “on the ground” to “get the scoop,” and that in the modern media’s attempt to tell a story, all too often it ends up getting in the way of the story that should be being told.