NOAH'S ARK, TOURIST CLASS

These are short, humorous sketches about life in present day Israel, less panoramic in subject matter than the writer's previous book, Look Hack, Mrs. Lot! Most of these pieces deal with neighbors and domestic problems. An enormous exaggeration of facts is built up, and suddenly, succinctly demolished by stern, everyday realities. The effect is often devastating and quite quite funny. Small incidents become large; a mouse in the house, a losing battle against baldness, a war with a neighbor's radio. There is a wild, funny, touching bit about the birth of a first son. There are improbable suggestions on how to make a living in modern . Much of the book, in fact, is about how to get along in an unlikely world, with the sudden retractions into the commonplace liable to leave the reader in an even more nonsensical world. In the midst of all this are two quite serious and bitter pieces about Political Israel. In spite of Mr. Kishon's deliberately small-scale subjects, he has an underlying, serious, biting, objective.