"A genuine tour-de-force" - Lesley McDowell on 'An Exquisite Sense of What Is Beautiful'. Palestine 1920s. Working as a land agent for one of the richest men in the world, Polish-Jewish immigrant Lev Sela finds himself swept into a passionate relationship with Celia Kahn, a beautiful Scottish pioneer, after stumbling upon a strategic area of land that doesn't exist on any map. The resultant struggle for ownership involves the Jews, the Arabs, the Zionists, the British, a Russian engineer with ambitions to build a hydro-electric power station and the Bedouin living there. Touching on issues of identity, idealism, displacement, community, socialism and feminism, The Land Agent is the third title in J. David Simons' magnum opus 'From Glasgow to Galilee' – a loose trilogy following his award-winning novels The Credit Draper and The Liberation of Celia Kahn.