Arabesques

Anton Shammas

University of California Press

2001

264 páginas

8h 48m

ISBN-13: 9780520228320

These two novels reflect the turmoil in the divided land from which they stem. Kaniuk, an Israeli Jew, centers the Arab-Israeli conflict in the mind of a "good Arab," the son of an Israeli heroine and a Palestinian scholar. His "confessions," as fantastical as his origins, elicit the truth that "in a tragedy there isn't one justice but two" and leaves him as divided as he was at birth. Shammas, an Israeli Arab and a Christian, moves in the other direction: interlacing myth, history, and familiar memories, he creates a tale that takes him toward some resolution of the disparate sources of his own identity. Depicting men and women as colorful as reality itself, he portrays Palestinians in a light that will surprise and please many American readers. Both novels manifest the literary influence of Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and both deserve wide readership. L.M. Lewis, Eastern Kentucky Univ., Richmond