A mountain appears in the city of Tel Aviv. Israel is blistering under an Apocalyptic fever. The world watches and waits for the end of it all.
As an apparently divinely conjured wind lays waste to Tel Aviv we are introduced to Eli a maniacal firefighter who rides his firetruck into the maelstrom, Hagar the fearless documentary filmmaker and yeshiva student Daniel, the sober devout End Times witness.
Oh and there is a disembodied virginal head.
This surreal, weirdly funny and very Biblical plot is The Tel Aviv Dossier, product of authors of Lavie Tidhar and Nir Yaniv.
Tel Aviv Dossier is broken into two halves, the first part the unraveling of reality. Part two documents a Tel Aviv, one year later, consumed by the metaphysical mountain and the war raging between two tribes at the edge of the history. The book jumps back and forth between apocryphal quasi-religious tomes, salvaged audio files and online chat conversations; followed by a more traditional (if unconventional) narrative path to climax.
The book’s strength comes from its unapologetic balance of surrealism and biblical authenticity. While some may get hung up on the weirdly comedic moments juxtaposed by death and revelation, the strangeness is actually magnified by realizing the writing team might be showing us new books of the Bible, but with a dark slap stick touch.
Tel Aviv Dossier reminds you that the canonical works of the faith were products of their time. And if, something other-worldly or inexplicable occurred in our today, how would it be written into the narrative of the faith tomorrow? Pop-culture become spiritual landmarks, obscured through time and turned profound by reinterpretation.
Tel Aviv Doisser shows you that common men and women can, when put into fantastic circumstance, become prophets, devils or disciples. You don’t need to be a religious scholar to appreciate the subtext and eschatological sarcasm oozing from Tel Aviv Dossier.
Will the fragmented archival style and occasionally disjointed storyline lose people? Yes. However, for us, these snap-shots are a literary devices that capture an authenticity, stealing facts, no matter how surreal. Tidhar and Yaniv utilize the device to blend biblical credibility into an absurd Apocalypse.
And calling Tel Aviv Dossier broadly Lovecraftian fits, so long as you throw in the pop-culture sensibilities of Nick Hornby with travelogue written up by Hunter S. Thompson.
A fantastically rambunctious book!
The Tel Aviv Dossier (digital copy) by Lavie Tidhar and Nir Yaniv from ChiZine Publications was received for free for review
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