by JULIET WATERS

The seed for Edeet Ravel's Governal General's Award-nominated first novel came from a conversation she once had with an interrogator in the Israeli army. "It's here, I think, on page 173," she says leafing through my copy of Ten Thousand Lovers.

Ami, the fictional hero of her book, has a gift for manipulating intelligence from Palestinian prisoners, but doesn't see much purpose to his job. No amount of information, he believes, is going to lead Israelis to the root of the problem. "It's pointless what they're doing, it's completely pointless. It's like the Wise Men of Chelm going to sea with a sieve to collect water. The Wise Men of Chelm are geniuses next to the people coming up with the strategies we're using… Do they really believe that you can just bully people out of existence?" Set in the late '70s, Ami seems to be a dying breed - a left-wing, idealistic Israeli soldier.

Ravel, a prominent peace activist and member of the Montreal-based Jewish Alliance Against the Occupation, says she believes that the army is less idealistic than it once was. "Chomsky laughs at this view, but I don't agree with Chomsky," she says over coffee last week. "But my impression is that there was more idealism in the military. It's true that even in the beginning there were many atrocities, there were massacres... but, I feel that there has been a change. In the '70s it was very hard to get out of the army, but now there are many more options... now kids come on the day of their induction with their psychiatrist's letter in their back pocket. Now you will find fewer left-wing people and a lot more extremists in the army, which is scary. It's one of the reasons there are so many killings [of civilians]. There are no consequences... it's a free for all there."

Certainly Ravel's book doesn't paint a picture of an idealistic army. Ten Thousand Lovers is set in the late '70s, when boundaries cultural, sexual and political are shifting everywhere, not just in Israel. Like any liberal, Ami cushions his conscience with money, drugs and frequent vacations. The affair he has with Lily, the novel's narrator, opens a window through which non-Israeli readers are allowed an intimate glimpse into this country and its often unfathomable choices.

The couples' immediate, intense attraction may seem a little over the top at first, but as the novel progresses, the unconscious forces driving them together are increasingly clear. Lily has spent most of her life in Canada, but her childhood was spent on a disastrous kibbutz. Children were separated from adults ostensibly to give children more freedom. Instead it left them vulnerable to the abuse of a sadistic bully. It makes perfect sense for Lily, who has returned to Israel as a student, to be so attracted to a man who may or may not be a professional torturer.

Ami falls in love with her the moment he hears her Hebrew accent, which immediately tags her as a native Israeli whose Canadian upbringing makes her less jaded to the horrors he wants to confess to her. Is Ami a fundamentally good man who will restore her trust? Or is he simply spinning a tale of himself as the humane Grand Inquisitor - a tale she needs to hear to be able to continue loving her country? Whatever the truth, Lily is from an era where the answers to these questions must be explored through experience, not psychotherapy.

"I interviewed many people who'd served in the Israeli army for this novel, including an officer who'd been in the army for six years. I gave him the manuscript and asked him to be totally honest about anything that wouldn't be credible. I did have to change a few things. For example, the scene in which Aim is so angry at a superior that he overthrows a desk. A former combat soldier said they're all throwing around tables morning noon and night. No one would consider this reaction very dramatic in an interrogation unit."

Though it's been 20 years since she had that inspirational conversation, Ravel doesn't regret waiting this long for success. "The best thing about publishing after you've been writing a long time is you don't have any of that second-novel pressure." Ravel has already finished the sequel, which is scheduled for publication next summer.

Ten Thousand Lovers by Edeet Ravel, Headline, hc, 373pp, $24.95