Kidnapped: Raw, visceral memoir of an October 7 hostage

In years to come, when the events of 7 October 2023 are studied, it is likely that Eli Sharabi’s memoir, Chatuf (Hebrew for “kidnapped”), will be essential reading. Released in June, it is the first book written and published by a returned Israeli hostage and has become Israel’s fastest ever selling book.

A resident of Kibbutz Be’eri, Sharabi was taken hostage at the age of 51 and held in Gaza for 491 days. During his captivity, unknown to him, his wife Liane and teenage daughters, Noya and Yahel, were murdered by Hamas on October 7. His brother Yossi, another resident of Be’eri, was also kidnapped and killed in captivity. His body is still being held by Hamas.

Sharabi’s book, written in Hebrew, is due to be released in English on October 7 this year, on the second anniversary of the massacre. He will visit Australia next month for a speaking tour.

Although my Hebrew is decent, I don’t usually choose to read Hebrew books. I barely noticed Sharabi’s book was in a different language, the descriptions were so visceral, so soul-baring, that it was entirely engrossing. I wasn’t just reading Chatuf, I was in the tunnel with Sharabi. I could smell the earth, feel the fear and the desire to survive, despite the harsh conditions and the odds.

Chatuf is not an easy read. Chapter by chapter, in raw and straightforward language, Sharabi walks us through what it meant to be taken from his home, driven to Gaza, and held first with a Thai farmworker named Kon, then deep in the earth in Hamas’s tunnels for over a year. He endures abuse and extreme starvation, but maintains a fierce desire to survive.

The power of this memoir lies not only in what it recounts, but in how freshly and nakedly the trauma is conveyed. “I am afraid,” Sharabi writes, remembering the moment he is forced to descend into Gaza’s tunnel network for the first time. “This is all my nightmares, all my fears, all my imagination, everything is going into the tunnels with me, step by step on the ladder.” You feel the weight of every footfall. His fear is unvarnished and human.