Author: Ayelet Gundar-Goshen
I have rarely been disappointed with international books that are translated into English. It isn’t surprising, given that they have first to be successful in their native land to even get the attention of American/English publishers. Then you have to find someone skilled in both languages who will painstakingly translate the book, making it readable in English without sacrificing the richness and nuance of the original story.
The translation for Waking Lions is so well done that if I had not seen the back cover, I would not have guessed that it was originally written in Hebrew. The author, Ayelet, tells the story of Doctor Eitan Green who is recently transferred to Beersheba and is taking his new SUV out for a spin after a tiring day at the hospital. It is dark and he doesn’t see the Eritrean man in front of him who he hits head on. He gets out of the car and being a doctor, quickly realizes that it is too late to save this man’s life. The drama that unfolds is a rather fantastic tale of how he tries to cover up this incident.
The book is a page turner that also doubles as a view into the discrimination that the majority of African immigrants face in Israeli. Doctor Green describes Sirkit, a beautiful Eritrian woman as "He knew that she was beautiful, and he knew that if he were to see her in the street, he would not give her a second glance”. I had to read that twice to convince myself that it wasn’t a typo and the deep meaning it conveys on how we are all blind to the prejudices that we carry.
Ayelet also seems to have done her research on medical procedures. There’s a ton of gory detail and some interesting trivia like the fact that the average human nail grows by 4 cm a year.
I loved the depiction of everyday life of Israelis and their encounters with the Eritreans and the Bedouins. While the plot seems rather fantastic to believe, the life and struggles of people in and around Beersheba seem all too real.
Author: Sheelah Kolhatkar
Every now and then, we hear of big insider trading scandals rocking Wall Street. When SAC capital pled guilty to insider trading in 2013 and settled with the SEC for a landmark amount of $1.8 billion, the world stopped and took notice. While several employees of SAC Capital were indicted, the owner, Steven Cohen walked away unscathed with over $10 billion of assets. Sheelah Kolhatkar does an excellent job in chronicling all the twists and turns around this case and the many different characters who were left without a chair when the music stopped.
If you have been around for a couple of decades you won’t have trouble appreciating that at the turn of the last millennium "Watching the Dow Jones industrial average go up became a national obsession”. It is during these heady times that hedge funds ballooned and their managers kept pushing the envelope so they could keep the high double digit returns going. SAC capital was one of the most successful hedge funds, pushing its traders and portfolio managers to go hunting for an “edge” to get ahead of other investors in the market. This could be by capitalizing on some inefficiences in the market, an analysis that nobody else had, or some information that most people didn’t have yet. It is the latter that is the most dangerous and has the potential to get you into “insider trading” territory which the author terms as “black edge”.
As you read one story after another on insider trading you can't help but conclude that it is rampant in the investment industry. The quest for "edge" seems natural for anyone who is looking to increase their chance of success. From the many different recent rulings on insider trading it's not even clear if the law lays down a very clear line that must not be crossed. Seven of the convictions described in the book where recently overturned on appeal because the court ruled that the person sharing the insider information must have somehow benefited from the transaction. Unlike other crimes like murder, assault or stealing where you can picture the victim, insider trading is harder for humans to conceptualize since the victims are not well defined.
In the end you're left with the question of why Matthew Marthoma didn't flip and implicate Steve Cohen, so he could have avoided a lengthy prison term. The last few pages of the book make a feeble attempt to outline some theories, but this is one piece of the puzzle that does not fit nicely. At times it's hard to keep up with the many different characters and different investigations that are going on but you get a huge appreciation for how difficult it is to prove insider trading cases.
