Native
Dispatches from an Israeli-Palestinian Life
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Essays by "Jerusalem's version of Charles Bukowski . . . Just as aware and critical—of his city, his family, Israel, the Arabs, but most of all of himself" (NPR).
Sayed Kashua has been praised by the New York Times as "a master of subtle nuance in dealing with both Arab and Jewish society." An Arab-Israeli who lived in Jerusalem for most of his life, Kashua started writing with the hope of creating one story that both Palestinians and Israelis could relate to, rather than two that cannot coexist together. He devoted his novels and his satirical weekly column published in Haaretz to telling the Palestinian story and exploring the contradictions of modern Israel, while also capturing the nuances of everyday family life in all its tenderness and chaos.
With an intimate tone fueled by deep-seated apprehension and razor-sharp ironic wit, Kashua has been documenting his own life as well as that of society at large: he writes about his children's upbringing and encounters with racism, about fatherhood and married life, the Jewish-Arab conflict, his professional ambitions, travels around the world as an author, and—more than anything—his love of books and literature. He brings forth a series of brilliant, caustic, wry, and fearless reflections on social and cultural dynamics as experienced by someone who straddles two societies.
"One of the most celebrated satirists in Hebrew literature . . . [Kashua] has an acerbic, dry wit and a talent for turning everyday events into apocalyptic scenarios."—Philadelphia Inquirer
"What is most striking in these columns is the universality of what it means to be a father, husband and man."—Toronto Star
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This startling and insightful collection of Kashua's (Second Person Singular) popular weekly columns for the Hebrew-language newspaper Haaretz narrates the sobering reality of life as an Israeli-Palestinian. A sense of mistrust and fear constantly thrums beneath his otherwise humorous reports on family life, literary life, and occasional drunkenness. Behind the bashful, bumbling antiheroics and ubiquitous self-deprecation lies a quiet, sane voice pleading for integration of "the two narratives of the two peoples." Kashua conveys devastating social critique through dry wit, precise metaphor, and seemingly innocent subjects, while in the periphery the rife racism and rising body count speak to the increasing struggle to reconcile two drastically different viewpoints. Whether recounting the insults encountered by his children, shaming from friends and critics alike, Kafkaesque encounters with the civil justice system, or his dreams of escape, Kashua maintains a light satiric tone and steady compassion even as the essays slide into disillusionment. Some nuances may be lost on American audiences, but Kashua's subtly shaded, necessarily complex, and ultimately despairing account of the tensions within his homeland, "so beloved and so cursed," is bound to open the eyes and awaken the sympathies of a new swath of loyal readers.
