Novel
Arabesques
ערבסקות
Anton Shammas · 1986
Synopsis
The narrator bears the author's name, Anton Shammas, and the novel alternates two parts. “The Tale” follows, over several generations, his Christian family from a remote village in Galilee, from the Arab revolt of 1936 to the end of the fifties, through the stories of Uncle Youssef: his parents' love affairs, his grandmother Alia, a cousin with an obscure fate, a treasure guarded by a rooster. “The Storyteller” follows the adult Anton in the eighties, from Jerusalem to Paris and then to an international writers' programme in Iowa City, where an Israeli writer would like to make him a character.
Context
The book was published in 1986 by Am Oved. The first major book by an Arab author in that language, it was praised for its prose and read in opposite ways: some saw in it an Arab nationalism, others a betrayal of the Arabic language, and Cynthia Ozick accused it of politicising Hebrew. Its author keeps place names and Arabic allusions in the Hebrew text. Translated into eight languages, never into Arabic, it appeared in English in 1988 in Vivian Eden's translation, and was hailed on the front page of the New York Times Book Review.
Who it is for
A novel of about three hundred pages, in two alternating narratives. It helps to know that Fassouta, the author's village, is a Christian village in Galilee.
Prizes and reception
The first major novel written in Hebrew by an Arab; chosen in 1988 among the seven best works of fiction of the year by the New York Times literary review.
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