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Title: Wild Thorns (Emerging Voices Series) by Sahar Khalifeh, Trevor Legassick, Elizabeth Fernea ISBN: 1-56656-336-4 Publisher: Interlink Pub Group Pub. Date: September, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.67 (9 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: An invitation to sit at a Palestinian dinner table
Comment: Guess what? Palestinians are people, too. If that sentence makes you angry, then you probably won't want to read this book -- but if you're willing to read with an open mind, you may come away from the book with an enriched understanding of "the other side." On the other hand, even if you already are sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians, but from the remote perspective of news reports, then this book will make it all more real to you.
The tale is already twenty-six years old, set just a few years into the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. Written by a Palestinian, about Palestinians, it is sympathetic to them, but it's not a propaganda piece. We get only rare glimpses of Israelis in this book, but when they do appear, they are shown in the same humane light that shines on the main characters. When a five year old Syrian boy meets his imprisoned father for the first time, the Israeli guards turn away with tears in their eyes. This is not the only scene in which someone on one side of the conflict responds compassionately to the suffering of someone on the other side.
Parents and grandparents want their boys and young men to study and become professionals with good incomes, and they hope for their daughters to marry successful daughters. Men struggle to feed their families and to negotiate a little self respect in spite of the compromises they find themselves making. Other men (and boys) alternate between pride, fear, and shame as they try to respond to the humiliations and oppression of their people with costly courage.
One of the great functions of literature is to let the reader walk in another's shoes. That is what I had in mind when I chose to read this book. I have not been disappointed.
Rating: 4
Summary: tragedy or farce?
Comment: My cousin kills a man and I carry off his daughter. Tragedy or farce?
-Wild Thorns
This novel is part of something called the Emerging Voices Series and, from what I could find online,
although the book is now over twenty-five years old and Sahar Khalifeh is in her fifties, she is indeed
considered one of the important voices in Middle Eastern literature. The action of Wild Thorns takes
place just a few years after Israel occupied the West Bank, which is where Khalifeh lived when she
wrote it. The main character in the book is Usama, a young Palestinian returning to the territories
after being fired from his job in the oil states. Though his mother has high hopes that he will marry a
lovely cousin, Usama has actually returned to his homeland on a mission, to blow up the buses which
carry Palestinian day laborers to their jobs in Israel.
Usama is shocked by the changes he finds on his return, the indignities that people put up with,
starting with the difficulty getting through the check points on the way into the territories, having to
submit to searches and interrogations. But he is most disturbed by how economically dependent
Palestinians have become on Israel, both for jobs and for consumer goods. He sees this as a kind of
collaboration, which implicates everyone in the occupation.
Meanwhile, the hero of the book is really Adil, another young Palestinian, Usama's cousin, who has
stayed at home, works at one of the well paying Israeli jobs in order to take care of his extended
family, and wants no part of the coming violence. But, inevitably, he too gets caught up in the sweep
of events. In the first instance, when he just happens to be on the scene when an Israeli soldier is
attacked and stabbed, Adil carries the soldier's young daughter to safety. But in the end, when Usama
and his cronies attack the very bus convoy that Adil is riding in, he ends up grabbing a gun himself.
Though Ms Khalifeh is obviously sympathetic to the plight of her people, the novel is largely
non-polemical. Adil seems to be as much a victim of Usama's mindless terrorism as is the Israeli
soldier. Yet, Adil's final decision to take up arms makes a certain awful sense too. Even someone as
generally hostile to the Palestinian cause as I am can understand how even the most decent and
reluctant of men would choose to fight with his own people when push came to shove. But, of course,
this is the evil logic of terror, to make everyone take sides, to turn even the peace loving into killers.
It is this that makes the events of the novel as tragic as they are inexorable.
Rating: 5
Summary: Understanding the Realities
Comment: I have always considered myself a dedicated sympathiser to the Palestinian cause, I have always had my doubts as to how to categorise in my mind those Palestinians referred to as "Arab Israelis" and those who accept to work 'inside'. With this book I have learned of my total ignorance on the subject of occupation, and Ms. Khalifeh has taught me a valuable lesson: it is impossible to draw this conflict in black and white. The shades of grey in this novel render the reality from within all the more tragic. Never before have i empathised so with this most unbelievable of injustices, one of the heaviest burdens to be placed squarely on the conscience of all nations and most of their citizens. I am sure that anyone who reads this book will be robbed of his or her ability to view the current developments with cold indifference.
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Title: The Secret Life of Saeed: The Pessoptimist (Emerging Voices: New International Fiction Series) by Imil Habibi, S. K. Jayyusi, T. Legassick, Trevor Le Gassick, Emile Habiby ISBN: 1566564158 Publisher: Interlink Pub Group Pub. Date: September, 2001 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: A Beggar at Damascus Gate by Yasmin Zahran, Yasmine Zahran, Yasamin Zahran ISBN: 0942996240 Publisher: The Post-Apollo Press Pub. Date: September, 1995 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih ISBN: 0435900668 Publisher: Heinemann Pub. Date: 01 January, 1970 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: A Balcony over the Fakihani (Emerging Voices: New International Fiction) by Liyana Badr, Peter Clark, Christopher Tingley, Barbara Harlow ISBN: 1566564646 Publisher: Interlink Pub Group Pub. Date: September, 2002 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Smile of the Lamb by David Grossman, Betsy Rosenberg ISBN: 031242096X Publisher: Picador USA Pub. Date: 01 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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