Vulture - by Phoebe Greenwood (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

NPR BEST BOOK OF 2025

The Economist Best Book of 2025
New York Times Editors' Choice

A darkly funny, heart-wrenching satire that tears through the guts of the war news industry.

Catch-22 on speed and set in the Middle East, Vulture is a fast-paced satire of the war news industry and a tragi-comic coming-of-age novel.

In November 2012, Sara Byrne, an ambitious young journalist, is sent to Gaza to cover a war from The Beach. At the four-star hotel, staff work tirelessly to provide safety, comfort and generator-powered internet for the world's media, even as their own homes and families are under threat.

Sara is determined to use this war to launch her stalling career and win back her lover. So, when her fixer Nasser refuses to set up the dangerous story she thinks will make her name, she turns instead to Fadi, the youngest member of a powerful militant family. Driven by the demons of a damaging, entitled, childhood, Sara will stop at nothing to prove herself, even if it brings disaster upon those around her.

Greenwood's debut novel draws readers into the dark heart of western media, and with audacity and humour, questions its complicity in the tragedies that feed it.

"So sharp and funny... A superb novel on reporting and war."
--Phil Klay, National Book Award-winning author of Redeployment

Review Quotes

★ "Greenwood debuts with a scathing satire of war journalism centered on an ambitious London freelancer who recklessly throws herself into covering the 2012 Gaza War... The novel provides an unflinching view of the conflict's human toll. This striking portrait of hubris will keep readers glued to the page."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"A supremely accomplished debut full of wit and bite."--The Economist, A Best Book of Fall 2025

"It's hard to say that the book is hilarious given all the graphic death and destruction, but Vulture is a daring dark comedy that doesn't shy away from the horrors that have been going on in the Palestinian territories for too long."--Leland Cheuk, NPR, A Most Anticipated Book of Summer 2025

"Greenwood's stinging, salient novel remains relevant (the more things change, the more they stay the same), excoriating those who make a business of war whether it's public or personal... A provocative, uncompromising powerhouse of a read."--Robert Allen Papinchak, Los Angeles Times

"Vulture is a hugely accomplished first novel, one that manages to be entertaining and sobering in equal measure... It requires great skill switching from catastrophe to comedy or vice versa, and Greenwood handles it with aplomb, producing deft chiaroscuro effects, sometimes on the same page."--Malcolm Forbes, Washington Examiner

"Though it's set amid another Gaza conflict, Vulture is less about the war than it is about foreign opportunism and interference... Its shocking conclusion indicting all those who exploit human tragedies for personal gain, Vulture is a scathing satirical novel set in the troubled Middle East."--Foreword Reviews

"In the early 2000s, the go-to destination for the Western media in Gaza was the Al Deira Hotel, opened during the brief period of optimism that followed the Oslo Accords... Phoebe Greenwood's novel, Vulture, conjures up this world with mordant humor
and breathtaking immediacy."--Joshua Hammer, The New York Times Book Review

"Ever wonder where our modern Catch-22 is to reflect the world that often feels like a dark farce?... As witty as it is wicked, Phoebe Greenwood's novel is a razor-sharp skewering of the war news industry that highlights both its absurdities and inhumanness in the face of unacceptable atrocities."--Chicago Review of Books

"This timely tragi-comic satire tears through the guts of the war news industry."--Country & Townhouse

"Vulture is not for the easily queasy. Readers can expect comically rendered bad behavior, graphic bodily functions, and the devastating cruelties and tragedies of war. In Greenwood's keen and capable hands, the effortless prose makes the story all the more impactful."--Shelf Awareness

"Greenwood's depictions of the media industry are painfully funny, and familiar to anyone who has covered news abroad... A story about a damaged industry."--Laura Mills, Washington Post

"Astute and darkly humorous debut... Vulture is a caustic study of what it means to report from a conflict, and particularly relevant to the current moment... Greenwood has created a particularly acerbic character, reluctant or perhaps unable to offer sincere emotions in the face of horrifying events... The style is compelling and blackly comic; the story could not be more serious."--The Guardian

"Greenwood gives a visceral account of being a war reporter, as she neatly skewers rude news editors, sexually anarchic photographers, and all the minor oddball journalists (including a blogger in a maroon beret) attracted to Gaza's 'mind-bending dimension of misery.' Vulture lays bare how the cynical modern war news industry fails the people whose tragedies fuel it... Vulture is a dark satire with real claws."--The Independent

"In a debut redolent of Graham Greene, Greenwood brings to life--in all their cynicism and all their humanity--the bullying, bragging, brilliant characters we rely on to bring us the news."--Benjamin Moser, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Sontag: Her Life and Work

"Brave, funny and beautifully written."--Martin McDonagh, Oscar-winning writer and director

"Martha Gelhorn meets Martin Amis."--Michael Hodges, author of AK47: A History of the People's Gun

"Vulture is the Scoop of our age--an absurdist tale of western media cynicism exposed by the unending horror of Gaza. Greenwood has created an antiheroine narrator whose view of the world is so darkly acerbic and sharply observed that, even as Sara appeals us with every turned page, we cannot bear to leave her side."--Julian Borger, author of I Seek a Kind Person

"Razor sharp and poignantly funny, Vulture is a remarkable debut."--Ammar Kalia, author of A Person Is A Prayer

"Greenwood explodes the romanticism of the foreign war correspondent with a sharp, satirical intelligence that is funny, moving and unforgettable."--Cosmo Landesman, Journalist

"Captivating and explosively comic."--Joel Whitney, author of Flights: Radicals on the Run

"There is much in this book that will be unsettlingly familiar to those who haunt the world's frontlines. What is strikingly different is Greenwood's voice...I salute her talent and the courage."--Fergal Keane, author of The Madness

"Vulture is so sharp and funny, and Phoebe Greenwood writes with such intelligence, such a flair for character and such an eye for the details of life in a war zone, that as you barrel forward you at first don't notice just how much sting there is to this book, and then you're left at the end, stunned and amazed. A superb novel on reporting and war."--Phil Klay, National Book Award-winning author of Redeployment