Neapolis

In this second installment of Names Deleted, the scene shifts to the besieged West Bank, where Yoni Sayar is conducting gender-bending surveillance of the twins Aybal and Jarizim, creators of the hit video game Hajiz Holocaust.

But trans-dimensional missionary Libi Raz is watching the brothers too. She needs them to test her historical memory vitamin, work that takes them all to Amman, where they enjoy the vitamin and a delicious gulyas prepared by Franz Kafka.

Meanwhile, Kafka's former therapist, Eden, is now working with a second Ashkenaz time-bandit who worries that all of the divine light has gone out of the world.

Add to this Levantine carnival, the final week of the reality show The Six Week War, a strange evening with Israel's Minister of National Security, and Yuval Assoul's fantasy date with the formidable Rivka Chait.

Returning readers will find their favorite characters right where they left them, drifting along toward a great darkness, but in colorful, new company.

BRIAN COLLINS is the author of When In Doubt, Tell the Truth (Columbia University Press), and three other novels, The Rath, The Italian Novel, and Eden, which is Book I of the trilogy Names Deleted from the Prophets Registry. Neapolis is Book II of the series.