– Graeme Simsion
‘Deft, poetic and insightful, Kaminsky’s The Waiting Room is an important and moving meditation on choice and generational trauma.’
– Leslie Cannold
‘Sublime. Achingly true and transcendent.’
– Catherine Therese
‘Leah Kaminsky has written a brilliant and harrowing book, one which becomes more relevant with each new terrorist act inflicted upon the civilized world.’
– Clint McCown
‘An astonishing novel that mingles the everyday with a twisted landscape of trauma and hauntings, the bitter honesty of ghosts, the live phantoms of terror.’
– Peter Bishop
‘Vivid, riveting, authentic with emotion and conflict.’
– Jerome E. Groopman
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Version 1.0
The Waiting Room
9780857986238
First published by Vintage Books Australia in 2015
This edition published by Vintage Books Australia in 2015
Copyright © Leah Kaminsky, 2015
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
A Vintage book
Published by Random House Australia Pty Ltd
Level 3, 100 Pacific Highway, North Sydney NSW 2060
www.randomhouse.com.au
Random House Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com/offices.
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Kaminsky, Leah, 1959– author.
The waiting room / Leah Kaminsky.
ISBN 978 0 85798 623 8 (ebook)
Women physicians – Israel – Haifa – Fiction.
Australians – Israel – Fiction.
A823.3
Cover images © Masterfile (chair); © Ilia K./Getty Images (Haifa);
© Konstantin Kalishko/Alamy (rug)
Cover design by Nada Backovic Designs
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.
This project is supported by the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria.
Waiting Room, The Page 20
