His Daughter

The noted Israeli author ( Adam Resurrected ; Confessions of a Good Arab ) characteristically paints larger-than-life protagonists who chase their own demons across dense and dazzling canvases. Here, the disappearance of his daughter, Miriam, forces a retired brigadier-general, Joseph Krieger, to reassess nothing less than his entire existence. His despairing search--both hallucination and thriller--uncovers his inadequacies as father, husband and man, and crumbles the illusions that are the specious foundation of his self-knowledge and understanding. While the players are certainly emblematic of the demise of a particular type of military superhero in Israeli popular mentality, and of a nation's confrontation of its own blindnesses, this is chiefly a universal Faulkneresque treatment as represented by family disintegration. Grappling with the haunting precariousness of identity, the crippling power of self-deception and the inexorable, often ferocious ties that bind parent and child, the highly original, ambitious Kaniuk continues to deeply move and tantalize the reader with his panoply of disturbed, confused characters. (Apr.)