Irony and humor as a whole are the elements that make it difficult for people to understand the general context of the novel. Whereas the protagonist is Arab and puts across thinking favoring Palestinian concepts, he gradually expresses lesser and lesser interest in serving a particular ethnic group as he realizes that he simply needs to improve his condition.
Given that some consider that "laughter particularly from a sense of irony, has become an illegitimate or untenable response to the problems of the Arab world" Khater, XXIV , it seems that the novel is not Palestinian in character. One can be inclined to consider that the novel has been written by using multicultural concepts as the author was influenced by Palestinian ideas and by Israeli beliefs. Habiby successfully managed to extract humor from situations that influenced other people in writing accounts filled with despair and pessimism.
While some can consider that Habiby's work is less passionate in comparison to the works of other Arab writers who wrote in regard to the Palestinian exile, others are likely to understand that Habiby overcame the moment when he felt infuriated and simply accepted his fate and the fate of his people at the time when he wrote the novel.
It is not that the writer is unable to understand the complexity of Palestinian-Israeli affairs, as he simply wants to ignore it through employing irony as a means to have his readers understand that conditions are critical. It is very probable that Habiby believed that there was nothing more that a person could do in order to save the Palestinian state and thus resorted to using irony with the purpose of raising people's awareness concerning the gravity of the problem.
The writer does not refrain from relating to how the condition of Palestinians is critical, but his perspective concerning the matter is concentrated on presenting people with humor because he knows that this is one of the only tools that Palestinians have been left with, as the international public appears to share less and less interest in the bleak nature of Palestinian-Israeli relations Khater, XXIV.
Irony is a very complex concept in this novel, especially considering that it advanced greatly in the twentieth century and Habiby came to appreciate its ability to depict dark concepts.
The writer practically came to use it with the purpose of putting across his perspective. Although there are a series of elements that point toward the belief that this novel is not Palestinian in character, the writer was, in fact, focused on putting across a Palestinian account and used modern techniques in order to underline Saeed's suffering.
Many are probable to consider that Saeed's attempt to collaborate with the Israeli government made him less Palestinian. However, this is not true, as he was simply a Palestinian individual who struggled to survive in an environment that made it impossible for him to follow his ideals. The situation is ironic as Saeed is shown as he tries to act against his principles because his life experiences coerce him in doing so.
The Israeli state seems to be unwilling to accept Palestinians, even when they express particular support regarding the state of Israel. Confusion dominates most of the book and it is very probable that the writer intended to have his readers go through great trouble in order to understand its meaning.
Palestinian identity is glorified at some moments in the novel and trampled on at other moments in the book. It appears that the writer wanted readers to understand that ethnicity is no longer important in desperate times and that an individual is capable of doing everything in his or her power in order to survive, even if this means that he or she needs to deny his background.
Habiby intended to have readers actively involved in understanding Saeed and thus resorted to using confusing elements throughout the novel, leaving readers unable to make connections between particular elements and having them employ complex thinking in interpreting various passages in the book. In a series of exquisite close readings of Arabic and Arab Jewish writing, Jeffrey Sacks considers the relation of poetic statement to individual and collective loss, the dispossession of peoples and languages, and singular events of destruction in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries.
Reading the late lyric poetry of the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish in relation to the destruction of Palestine in , Sacks reconsiders the nineteenth century Arabic nahda and its relation to colonialism, philology, and the European Enlightenment. He argues that this event is one of catastrophic loss, wherein the past suddenly appears as if it belonged to another time.
Said, Iterations of Loss shows that language interrupts its pacification as an event of aesthetic coherency, to suggest that literary comparison does not privilege a renewed giving of sense but gives place to a new sense of relation.
Traces the development of the modern Arabic novel from the s to the present. Rather, both novels provide the Other's version of an event to supplement the mainstream narrative; ultimately creating a multifaceted text that is inclusive.
As a result, they creatively expose the ideological hierarchy that perpetuates dispossession, and how it affects both the oppressor and the oppressed. This study also observes parallels shared between them such as the use of racialized discourse to perpetuate the marginalization and dispossession of one group of society.
The texts refer to events that the colonizer and the colonized share to expose hi stories that were silenced or misrepresented in the mainstream version of events to prompt the reader to explore, uncover and suspect the history written by the victors.
Bakhtin's critical theory illuminates the narrative strategies used by the works to achieve subversion of the hegemonic discourse, introduction of multiple viewpoints, and the weaving of history with imaginative episodes. Want to Read. Buy on Amazon. Rate this book. Emile Habiby , Trevor Le Gassick. This contemporary classic, the story of a Palestinian who becomes a citizen of Israel, combines fact and fantasy, tragedy and comedy.
Saeed is the comic hero, the luckless fool, whose tale tells of aggression and resistance, terror and heroism, reason and loyalty that typify the hardships and struggles of Arabs in Israel.
An informer for the Zionist state, his stupidity, candor, and cowardice make him more of a victim than a villain; but in a series of tragicomic episodes, he is gradually transformed from a disaster-haunted, gullible collaborator into a Palestinian -- no hero still, but a simple man intent on survival and, perhaps, happiness. Librarian note: an alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here. Fiction Novels Literature Politics More details. Emile Habiby 13 books 54 followers.
He was born in today's Israel, which at that time was part of the British Mandate of Palestine. Born in to a Protestant Palestinian Arab family his family had originally been Arab Orthodox but converted to Protestantism due to disputes within the Orthodox church In his early life he worked on an oil refinery and later was a radio announcer.
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