Vulture

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

"Brave, funny and beautifully written.”—Martin McDonagh, writer and director

"A daring dark comedy."—NPR

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

An ambitious young journalist, Sara is sent to cover a war from the Beach Hotel in Gaza. The four-star hotel is a global media hub, promising safety and generator-powered internet, with hotel staff catering tirelessly to the needs of the world’s media, even as their own homes and families are under threat.

Sara is determined to launch her career as a star correspondent. So, when her fixer Nasser refuses to set up the dangerous story she thinks will win her a front page, she turns instead to Fadi, the youngest member of a powerful militant family. Driven by the demons of her entitled yet damaging childhood, Sara will stop at nothing to prove herself in this war, even if it means bringing disaster upon those around her.

Greenwood’s debut novel brings readers into the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and with audacity and humour depicts the media’s complicity in this ongoing tragedy.

"Brave, funny and beautifully written.” Martin McDonagh, writer and director
“In a debut redolent of Graham Greene, Phoebe 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
“There is much in this book that will be unsettlingly familiar to those who haunt the world’s frontlines as witnesses, addicts, and driven personalities. What is strikingly different is Phoebe Greenwood’s voice. This is a novel of honesty, humour and sadness told with great verve.”  Fergal Keane, author of The Madness
“Razor sharp and poignantly funny, Vulture is a remarkable debut. Greenwood writes with rage, wit and deep empathy, exposing the hypocrisies of the war media complex and making us confront our own complicity as readers in the process." Ammar Kalia, author of A Person Is A Prayer
"Vulture is the Scoop of our age - an absurdist tale of western media cynicism exposed by the unending horror of Gaza. Greenwood is a natural born writer and in Sara Byrne, she has created an antiheroine narrator whose view of the world is so darkly acerbic and sharply observed that, even as Sara appals us more with every turned page, we cannot bear to leave her side for a moment." Julian Borger, author of I Seek a Kind Person
“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
"Martha Gelhorn meets Martin Amis." Michael Hodges, author of AK47: A History of the People’s Gun
“A powerful and gripping tale that is brave and brilliant. Greenwood explodes the romanticism of the foreign war correspondent with a sharp, satirical intelligence that is funny, moving and unforgettable.” Cosmo Landesman, journalist
“A captivating and explosively comic first novel – Joseph Heller's extracurricular hijinks collide with Graham Greene's toxic innocence.” Joel Whitney, author of Flights: Radicals on the Run
"Imagine Phoebe Waller-Bridge's Fleabag as a war correspondent in Gaza and you'd get Sara, the cynical and raunchy antiheroine of Phoebe Greenwood's Vulture..... a daring dark comedy." NPR

Phoebe Greenwood is a writer and journalist who has covered British and foreign affairs for publications including the Guardian, the Spectator and the Sunday Times. She was based in Jerusalem as a Middle East stringer for the Daily Telegraph and the Guardian between 2010-2013 and a staff editor and correspondent at the Guardian in London from 2013 -2021, where she continued to commission and file from Israel/ Palestine. When she left the Guardian in 2021, she was Assistant Editor of the paper. She has also reported for France 24 and was a host on Vice News Tonight HBO. She is currently the Europe Editor of Hyphen.

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