Smith's Gazelle

This is a lovely, wistful fantasy, that never fails to move me; I read it about once a year, since I first discovered it almost 20 years ago. I can only wonder who has the screen rights to this humorous, touching, book.

Smith's Gazelle succeeds on many levels - as the story of Bedu and kibbutzim co-existing as children, fighting as adults; as the story of an endangered specie whose fragile durability is emblematic of the shared hopes of the common people in disputed land; as a story of conservation and nature. Davidson writes with genius from the points of view of a crazed Bedouin shepherd without a nose, of a nine year old Bedouin boy, of a nine year old Israeli boy. His love for his story and its people shines through, and the story moves with a briskness which is rare in something so well-written. It's a hugely good book.

It has been more than a decade since I read Lionel Davidson's Smith's Gazelle, but I remember it as a delight. Davidson, an Englishman and an Israeli, sets his story in Israel, as his protagonists collaborate with an Israeli officer in trying to locate a rare species of gazelle that they are not sure even still exists. It is hard to convey what makes this book such a delight. More economically plotted that Davidson's earlier novels (Rose of Tibet, etc.), and offering fewer "thrills" and dangers, it nevertheless may be the best of this master storyteller's works.