"From one of Israel's leading investigative journalists, honest portraits of Israeli men and women who, in the face of brutal and desperate forces, try - often without success - to hold onto their past, their identity, their sanity, and their hope.". "The son of a Holocaust survivor descends into paranoia, "swept away like a demon-ravaged refugee ship"; a Bedouin boy kills his father with a stone; a Russian immigrant crashes his car - his sole, proud possession - and vanishes into the desert; a veteran is left with agonizing memories of his fallen comrades in the Yom Kippur War; a senior army officer who grew up believing himself to be an orphan discovers his mother living among Arabs in Jordan.". "These are just a few of the people whose stories make up this book. Igal Sarna lets their tales speak for themselves, weaving individual voices into a narrative of power. The Man Who Fell into a Puddle reveals the profound human suffering at the heart of the process of creating the Israeli nation."--BOOK JACKET.