Arafat's Elephant: Stories Book

What these stories all have in common is Israel, a place so packed with polarity and conflict that bizarre juxtapositions are ordinary. A terrorist on his mission is waylaid by a tourist couple asking for a photograph. An orthodox girl's rendez-vous with destiny is derailed by a commonplace transaction. The richness and variety of these bizarre collisions of the mundane is Tel's theme. It's a step back from the pathos or politics that it would be easy to fall into regarding the conflicts there. Narrated in cool, articulate, humane and often funny prose, the tales play expertly with different formats to reveal how minor the differences of stylistic posturing actually are.