Saraya, the Ogre's Daughter: A Palestinian Fairy Tale
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- Synopsis
- Fiction. Middle Eastern Studies. Translated from the Arabic by Peter Theroux. This hypnotically lyrical last novel by the leading Palestinian prose writer of the twentieth century is equal parts allegory, folk tale, memoir, political commentary, and ode to a ruined landscape. Rendered for the first time ever in English by one of the leading translators of contemporary Arabic literature, it is a haunting tour de force-essential reading for anyone interested in the imaginative life of the Middle East. One moonless night in the summer of 1983, on a boulder off the shore of what once was al-Zeeb, a Palestinian village north of Acre, the narrator of Emile Habiby's haunting last novel catches a glimpse of a mysterious female figure in the sea. "The episode," he says, "was a kind of key, like the ancient Egyptian key of life... or a magic instrument, like Aladdin's lamp. I took it up as I began to excavate the mountains of oblivion, trying, as best I could, to penetrate the caverns of memory." In the remarkable tale that follows, Habiby's alter-ego--novelist, politician, devoted fisherman--struggles to discover just who or what this apparition was. Saraya, as she is known, is a character in a Palestinian legend about a young girl captured and imprisoned by an ogre. But in Habiby's subtle, dark, and often wryly comic telling, she takes on a fluid host of roles, sometimes shifting in the course of a single page from the flesh-and-blood beloved of the hero's childhood to a whispery symbol of the wadis and ridges around Mount Carmel to a kind of laughing muse. "Who is this Saraya and who is the ogre?" he asks himself, early on...
- Copyright:
- 2006
Book Details
- Book Quality:
- Excellent
- Book Size:
- 214 Pages
- ISBN-13:
- 9789659012459
- Publisher:
- Ibis Editions
- Date of Addition:
- 01/10/16
- Copyrighted By:
- Ibis Editions
- Adult content:
- No
- Language:
- English
- Has Image Descriptions:
- No
- Categories:
- Literature and Fiction
- Submitted By:
- Deborah Murray
- Proofread By:
- Fatima Alsofayyan
- Usage Restrictions:
- This is a copyrighted book.