Second Person Singular
A Novel
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3.8 • 4 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
An award-winning novel of love, betrayal, and Arab Israeli identity by the author of Dancing Arabs—"one of the most important contemporary Hebrew writers" (Haaretz).
A successful Arab criminal attorney and a social worker-turned-artist find their lives intersecting under the most curious of circumstances. The lawyer has a thriving practice in Jerusalem, a large house, and a Mercedes. He speaks both Arabic and Hebrew, and lives with his wife and two young children. To maintain his image as a sophisticated Israeli Arab, he makes frequent visits to a local bookstore and picks up popular novels. But on one fateful evening, he decides to buy a used copy of Tolstoy's The Kreutzer Sonata, a book his wife once recommended. Tucked in its pages, he finds a love letter, in Arabic . . . in his wife's handwriting.
Consumed with suspicion and jealousy, he decides to hunt down the book's previous owner—a man named Yonatan. But Yonatan's identity is more complex than the attorney imagined. In the process of dredging up old ghosts and secrets, the lawyer breaks the fragile threads that hold all of their lives together.
Winner of the 2011 Bernstein Prize, Second Person Singular is "part comedy of manners, part psychological mystery" (The Boston Globe) that offers "sharp insights on the assumptions made about race, religion, ethnicity, and class that shape Israeli identity" (Publishers Weekly).
"[Kashua's] dry wit shines." —Los Angeles Times
"Kashua's protagonists struggle, often comically . . . making his narratives more nuanced than some of the other Arabs writing about the conflict" —Newsweek
"Sayed Kashua is a brilliant, funny, humane writer who effortlessly overturns any and all preconceptions about the Middle East. God, I love him." —Gary Shteyngart, author of Super Sad True Love Story
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"The lawyer" is a well-off Israeli Arab who becomes obsessed with the thought that his wife is having an affair. His violent reaction is disturbing, but apparently necessary to set in motion the chain of events that link him with the man he suspects is his wife's lover. At its best, this novel illuminates just how fluid identity can be, even or especially amid the Arab-Israeli tension of Jerusalem. While the actual constructs of the plot can veer into the implausible, as when a paralyzed Jewish boy's mother allows his Palestinian caretaker to steal her son's identity, the deception sparks a compelling two-sided narrative: the young Palestinian man, pretending to be Jewish, enrolls in school and overhears Arabs' conversations but never lets on that he understands. Unfortunately, the writing, often redundant and sluggish, could have used a shrewd editor. Kashua, a columnist for Haaretz, has sharp insights on the assumptions made about race, religion, ethnicity, and class that shape Israeli identity. Ideally, next time he will trade a cumbersome plot for characters that bring his wisdom to light.
