Novel
سلطانة
Not translated into English
Ghalib Halasa · 1987
Synopsis
Jeries, a transparent double of the author, wakes at the beginning of the novel in a Jordanian village of the forties, with its houses, its families and its dramas. He leaves it for Amman, the nascent city of its intellectuals and its first communist militants, then lives in Cairo in the time of Sadat. Around him revolve Sultana, who gives the book its title, and her daughter Amira, whom Jeries makes the heroine of the novel he is writing in Cairo.
Context
The book appeared in Beirut from Dar al-Haqa'iq in 1987 and was reissued in 2003. The Arab Writers Union placed it fortieth in its list of the hundred best Arabic novels of the century. Critics read in it a history of the birth of Jordan under Emir Abdullah, of the communist movement and of Amman, as well as an autobiography in which woman appears as mother, lover, protector or prostitute.
Who it is for
A sweeping novel in Arabic, between autobiography and chronicle; only one chapter exists in English translation.
Prizes and reception
The Arab Writers Union ranks it among the great Arabic-language books of the twentieth century.