Atzmon's first book, "A Guide to the Perplexed", published in 2001, is a comic novel set in a future in which Israel has been replaced by a Palestinian state. Jeffrey St. Clair in "CounterPunch" described it as "vividly written satire, infused with a ribald sense of humor and an unsparing critique of the incendiary political cauldron of the Mideast". Matthew J. Reisz for "The Independent" wrote that "As a viciously black satire on Israeli life" the book "is grandiose, childish and nasty, but with just enough connection with reality to give it a certain unsettling power" while Darren King in "The Observer" commented that "it works because Atzmon writes with so much style and his gags are so hilarious".