With rare wit, intimate knowledge of the human heart, and his usual storytelling mastery, one of Israel's most highly acclaimed writers portrays a man--and a generation--that dreams noble dreams but does nothing. It is a stirring tale in which one man's emotional disintegration mirrors the ethical breakdown of the Jewish state. Oz uses his eponymous protagonist to indict what he sees as the ineptitude of the Israeli government and the foolishness of the intelligentsia. Efraim "Fima" Nisan, sometime poet, sometime journalist, full-time dreamer, polemicist, philosopher and receptionist at a Jerusalem gynecological clinic, has made a mess of what was once a promising life. Twice divorced, supported mainly by gifts from his loving father, he bumbles through his days in an absentminded fog interrupted by long interior monologues and obsessive verbal diatribes in which he rails against the corruption of Israeli values. Contemplating the occupation of the Territories, Fima goes almost mad with moral outrage, taking upon himself the moral conscience of the nation. The novel teems with ideas hurled at a frantic pace, and with dialogue that argues and counter-argues the essential issues of Jewish history.