Lily la Tigresse

Book excerpt: The hilarious second novel from actress and bestselling novelist Alona Kimhi holds up a comically warped mirror to contemporary Israel, as well as the very notion of "chick lit." Inhabiting a dark fairy-tale version of modern life, drawing equal inspiration from Angela Carter and the iconography of the classic horror movie, this is the story of Lily, our proudly overweight and romantically unlucky protagonist, who discovers a wild freedom in part through her friendship with a Russian prostitute, Ninush. This is a world of cellulite-dissolving panties, sex change as an outlet for self-expression, and the final triumph of the titular tigress; where metamorphosis is the rule, and where the waking world has become a funhouse prowled by our wildest desires.