The American Soldier in Arab Novels
Iraqi writers, by and large, have created worlds where the soldier’s perspective, either Iraqi or foreign, isn’t primary.
Where the Bird Disappeared – Ghassan Zaqtan
Time isn’t linear, and it’s in this way that the book resists both nationalist and anti-nationalist narratives about how a Palestinian people have progressed or failed.
On this Wedding D-day, the characters are balanced on a precipice: Will they move toward a revolution and remake the social order? Will the authoritarian regime hold things together? Or will absolutely everything come crumbling down?
The rat is the most destructive, the most gluttonous, and the most reproductive animal. It doesn’t kill just when it is hungry, but also, and especially, because it enjoys destruction.
The Mehlis Report – Rabee Jaber
Some critics suggest that Jaber, who writes prolifically, needs to slow down or submit himself to an editor’s scissors. But The Mehlis Report makes for a glorious ramble, a leaping of the lines between investigation and gossip, between present and past, between life and death.
I have to be in this frame of mind where I’m feeling pity for myself, and feeling pity for the world. Once I’ve attained the summit of this, then I have to sit down and write.
I wanted to put a Palestinian voice in English literature.