[In "Three Days and a Child," Yehoshua's] talent is immediately apparent. He has been influenced by Kafka and, like him, has managed to convey, by the specifics of objective reality, a unique inner world. He is a fabulist; his characters inhabit a familiar but mysterious universe in which meaning and emotion are expressed by many esthetic elements: leitmotif, counterpoint, and, when he is in full control, over-all structure.

"Flood Tide" is the one story in the collection that doesn't make it at all. It is too abstract, too remote from the natural world (the landscape of Israel) to be convincing. The title story, however, is fascinating; too diffuse, like some of the others, but an extraordinary study of what the Bible, the great Talmudists and Hassidic masters called "the evil impulse."

Anguished by jealousy, the narrator wants to kill the child of a woman he once loved. It...