Friendly Fire, By A B Yehoshua

Less celebrated here than his Israeli peers Amos Oz and David Grossman, Yehoshua deserves in his unsparing and unsettling fictions of a society uneasy with itself to match their fame.

In this bitingly well-observed novel – last year shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize – Daniela, teacher and lover of language, travels from Israel to east Africa. Out of place, and stirred by change, she seeks to comfort her bereaved brother-in-law at his archaeological dig.

But behind his immediate grief lies memories of a tragedy that links personal loss with political anguish. At home, husband Amotz runs a business and makes his own soul-shifting discoveries, in a profound portrait of a marriage that also crosses borders of the mind.