Displaced

German author Abarbanell’s ambitious if flawed first novel, a tale of intrigue, centers on post-WWII Palestine. In 1946, Lilya Tova Wasserfall, a member of an elite unit of the Palmach, the underground army devoted to establishing an independent Jewish state, receives an unusual assignment from her commander regarding the brother of an old friend of his. Elias Lind, a famous author who fought for his native Germany during WWI and later emigrated to Palestine, believes that his brother, Raphael, a Berlin academic, survived the war, but two British Mandate representatives recently informed him that the Nazis murdered Raphael. Lilya is directed to travel to Germany, where, posing as a member of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, she searches for Raphael at one of the large displaced persons camps in Germany set up by the U.S. Army. She is also to look for information that can be used against the British occupiers and further the Zionist cause. Abarbanell does a good job dramatizing the history of the period, but the situations and characters will strike many readers as too familiar. (Nov.)