A Restaurant in Jaffa

Ryan Thompson's company is failing. His girlfriend has left him and his business partner has disappeared. Now, the NSA is knocking at his door. A group of Palestinian revolutionaries called Istam’la piggybacked onto his company's software to compromise critical industrial, government, and military systems in the U.S. To clear his name, Ryan teams up with Eliana Beck, an Israeli-American intelligence agent with a complicated history that rears its head in New York. They must work together to stop an insidious cyberterrorism campaign designed to extract a ransom that will change the entire landscape of the Middle East. A RESTAURANT IN JAFFA combines contemporary science and ancient settings with the unraveling of a chillingly plausible cyber offensive. It is the tale of two talented individuals, each struggling with a troubled past and caught in the middle of a modern global conflict.
This promoted book and discussion guide was shared and sponsored in partnership with Dartfrog Books.

Book club questions for A Restaurant in Jaffa by Mark E Sorenson

Use these discussion questions to guide your next book club meeting.

Are you concerned about cyberterrorism at a personal level, where you could be hacked and forced to do something like Corky was? Why or why not?

What did you think about the ending? Were you satisfied with the resolution, or disappointed? If you could write one more chapter, how would you continue the story?

Sometimes the setting or settings in a book are just as impactful as the characters themselves. How did the settings in the novel (Silicon Valley, New York, DC, Israel, Gaza) affect your perspective on the challenges that the characters faced? Did having a developed sense of place help you understand their viewpoints and the choices they made? How did these settings add to or subtract from the book as a whole?

What did you think about Mrs. Feeney? What role did she play in the novel?

Were there scenes in the book you thought were unique, thought-provoking, or disturbing? How so, and how do you think these parts affected the way you perceived the characters and their motivations?

Do you think Ryan’s father will find peace with his wife’s death now that Ryan is successful? Do you think he’ll move on himself?

How did the unraveling of Corky’s story affect the way you viewed his character in general?

What do you think Hassan’s future is going to look like based on his past and his situation at the end of the book?

Do you have a new perspective on modern-day international conflict and relations as a result of reading this book? Did you learn something about technology, a different culture, or any of the other themes that contributed to the plot that you didn’t know beforehand?

A Restaurant in Jaffa Book Club Questions PDF

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