Abou Ben Adhem, a Palestinian, copes by day with village political intrigue, Arab-Israeli violence and his own family turmoil, interspersed with nightly conversations with an angel named Cohen about the roots of mankind's behavior through the ages, in this poignant and ironic novel set in Gaza in 2001.

Claude Campbell, a former English professor at the City University of New York, lives in Kodak, Tennessee, near Knoxville.