This is fiction but many professional reviewers have treated it as representing real life in the West Bank. From that perspective I was disappointed by the author's failure to explore differences among the many kinds of Palestinian interest groups and individuals. The picture presented here is relentlessly downbeat and oversimplified. A very complex conflict is viewed through the single lens of one man's heroic struggle against what we are led to believe is pervasive and unremitting immorality on the part of just about everyone outside his immediate family, but especially fellow Palestinians. I doubt that Rees' portrayal does justice to the range of motivations of the protagonists and the varieties of resistance against evil that actually occur in such situations. It is to be hoped that Rees will harness his experience with this part of the world to a more nuanced plot in his next novel.