Adonis

Ostensibly a detective mystery, this light-hearted first novel is built like a box within a box. Wandering about Tel Aviv during the 1991 Gulf War, the narrator comes across the diary of Avner Ben-Horin, former policeman turned private detective, and retells his story. The diary dates back to British Mandate Tel Aviv during the 1930s – an energetic, defiant fledgling town with bizarre frontier quality (unlike the modern city under missile attack, stunned by its vulnerability and fearing its destruction). An introspective man with a literary bent, Avner Ben-Horin is hired to unravel the disappearance of Zecharia Yulin, but his personal account of the investigative trail is in fact a shell, opening to reveal an intensely nostalgic, confessional narrative. Indeed, the mystery disappearance is solved at the conclusion of Ben-Horin’s diary within his help.

Under detective cover, Sivan (whose distinctive poetic voice is heard throughout) paints a colorful, exotic period in Tel Aviv’s history, including the violent political fissions of leftists and Communists of the time, the literati, love affairs and oddball characters from all corners of the earth. His target is also the nature of literary creation. The nameless contemporary narrator returns at the end to consider Ben-Horin’s motive for writing down the tale of his failed stab at detective work. He raises an array of possibilities, so doing the work of critics and saving them the use of their scalpel. The true subject of the novel, however, is the author’s loving, sinuous recreation of place and era.