"Israel is neither a country, nor a nation," the writer Amos Oz once told an audience in Portland, Oregon. "Actually, it is a fiery collection of arguments." For Israeli journalist Ruth Margalit, Israel is a collection of fiery people, too – all kinds of people, from contentious political extremists like National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir to Sayed Kashua, the eminent Palestinian writer driven all the way to the United States by Israel's demoralizing treatment of its Palestinian citizens.

Margalit's nonfiction debut, "In the Belly of the Whale," which was released on September 22, draws from years of studying some of Israel's biggest personalities in granular form. The result is a searing, deeply compassionate – sometimes even comically absurd – view of Israel, "a place vigorously debated but little understood," as her introduction says.

Margalit strings together, in one efficient volume, published in the United States by Steerforth Press in collaboration with Altneuland Press internationally, a variety of characters she has covered over the last decade, a checkered pantheon of Israeli personalities and provocateurs told through close narratives, her vivid observations cutting close to her subject's bones.

Characters like Miri Regev and Ben-Gvir, easy targets for liberal contempt due to their outsized influence and media antics – to say nothing of their actual politics – come across as people who could be the eccentric aunt or uncle pressing buttons around the family dinner table. At an event hosted by Haaretz, Margalit describes Regev's spectacular persona: "Standing in front of the audience, her expression set between a smirk and a scowl, she clutched the lectern with one hand. 'I was always told to start a speech with a quote; it makes for a cultured impression,' she began. 'So here goes. As the famed Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu once put it' – she switched to accented English – 'Cut the bullshit! Cut the bullshit!'"