Tel Aviv Under Ground

Meir Holtzman, a well known Tel Aviv archaeologist, is about to have his first child and is also on the verge of an important discovery. But his nights are torn by a troubling nightmare: He has finished writing his book about a Crusader fortress buried between a Palestinian village and an Israeli settlement, and he takes the underground in Tel Aviv in order to deliver it to the publisher. He soon realizes that the train he is on is speeding toward catastrophe. He manages to escape, but loses his manuscript while chasing after a mysterious beauty in a red coat.

This is a psychological and political novel with comical qualities, built like a detective story and centering on a hero gripped by fear and lust. The need to decipher his nightmare leads Meir to dig into his past and search his soul. The deprived neighborhood where he grew up, his Holocaust-survivor parents and the colorful characters of his childhood, including a little girl in a red coat, float to the surface of his memory. Is there a link between the little girl and the woman in his dream? Does she represent his mother`s traumatic past? Or is she a symbol of the moral and ideological crisis that both Meir and Israeli society have to confront?