LOVE THY NEIGHBOR: A Story of War.<i> Alfred A. Knopf: 306 pp., $25</i>

When you grow up in America, you don’t really learn how foul humans can smell, just as you don’t learn about the smell of death. Taking a crowded bus in the summer exposes you to unpleasant odors, but that is a transitory experience. If you turn your head or move a few steps away from an offending commuter, the smell is gone.

No amount of journeys on buses, however, can prepare you for the stink of refugees. When you enter a sports hall filled with women and children who have not washed for a month, or when you enter a cowshed filled with male prisoners who have not washed for two or three months, you smell something new, and it is terrible. You think that somebody has wrapped a discarded dishrag around your face, and that you must inhale air through it. Of course the smell is disgusting.