This charmingly inventive, deliciously improbable seriocomic novel opens at eleven o'clock in the morning of July 14 in the year 2000 on the Avenue d'Angleterre in Beirut. Private George Smith of the American Peace-Keeping Forces in Lebanon is breathlessly chasing a hand grenade—which he threw in the line of duty—down the street. It seems he forgot to pull the pin. At that very moment, one Heloise Svejk is crossing the street from east...