Product Description

'Beautiful, lyrical, sensitive and meaningful ...It deserves to be read and re-read' - "Los Angeles Times". Two deadly enemies - a young Arab rebel and a Jewish runaway - meet in a remote valley to begin a quest. Both have been taught since infancy to hate; to attack for self-defence. But something incredible is happening to them, something that not even the fierce shelling of the Six-Day War can intrude upon. For they are on a fantastic mission, a mission both believe has been set for them by God ...Gripping, exciting and incredibly poignant, "Smith's Gazelle" is an intriguing thriller from a master of the genre.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #386961 in Books
• Published on: 2008-07-17
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 236 pages

About the Author
Lionel Davidson was born in 1922 in Hull, Yorkshire. He left school early and worked as a reporter before serving in the Royal Navy during World War II. His first novel, The Night of Wenceslas, was published in 1960 to great critical acclaim and drew comparisons to Graham Greene and John le Carre. It was followed by The Rose of Tibet (1962), A Long Way to Shiloh (1966) and The Chelsea Murders (1978). He has thrice been the recipient of the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger Award and, in 2001, was awarded the CWA's Cartier Diamond Dagger lifetime achievement award.

Customer Reviews

Saint-Exupery in the middle east
On the surface this is about 2 boys, one jewish and the other arab who along with a multiply handicapped old man help raise a rare species in a ravine. The background is the six day war.

A near to extinct gazelle finds its way to a lost valley where an outcast arab decides it is a test of god for him to save the species and raise a herd. There follows many more impossibilities and a highly biased account of the six day war but surprisingly a simpathetic character in the young Bedouin Musallem.

What allegorical meanings there are in the events depicted (as there are clearly meant to be some) are to me of secondary importance and it is the well-crafted interplay of characters which is this book's strength. Their emotions and conflicted loyalties give an insight into the background of the continuing problems in this area and I beleive to the impossibility of them ending.

A curious tale with many hidden meanings. Good strong characters and interactions between them.

Brilliant parable of conflict
No, it's not Kolymsky Heights; it's a novel, not an adventure story, and it celebrates the adventures of three very different people (two boys and a defective old man), their interactions with nature, and their conflicts with the apparatus of a modern state. It's funny and wise, mordant, sparkling with wit and with non-judgmental understanding and compassion for the very different people who inhabit its world.

Check this out if only for its unusual story.
Smith's Gazelle is a story set against the backdrop of the conflict in the Middle East and concerns the bizarre tale of an unlikely hero who undertakes the sole conservation of an extremely rare gazelle.

The book is slow to start with the background characters doing very little of interest however the book gains pace and interest as the ongoing activities of the hero unfold.

The characters are well defined and believable and you feel empathy for the main character.

This is a good book but certainly does not have the nail biting, 'must read' qualties of Kolymsky Heights by the same author.