Nisanit - Softcover

Faqir, F.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 014013333X ISBN 13: 9780140133332

Publisher: Penguin Books, 1990

Synopsis

A powerful socio-political novel, Nisanit, depicts love, compassion, sacrifice, suffering and lost innocence in an atmosphere of conflict, hatred and oppression. Nisanit's three entwined narrative lines show the Arab-Israeli conflicts through the eyes of Shadeed, the Palestinian guerrilla fighter; David, his Israeli interrogator; and Iman, the young Arab woman in love with Shadeed. The three main characters are seen as vicitms of history and geography who are grappling with the human cost of the Arab-Israeli and Arab-Arab conflicts.

About this title

About the Author

Fadia Faqir is a Jordanian/British writer, independent scholar and defender of human rights. Her first novel, Nisanit, was published by Penguin in 1990 and is currently being translated into Arabic. Her second novel, Pillars of Salt, was published by Quartet Books in 1996, and was translated into German, Dutch and Danish. The Danish translation was the runner up for the ALOA literary award 2001. She is the editor and co-translator of In the House of Silence: Autobiographical essays by Arab women writers, Garnet Publishing, 1998, translated into Turkish. She was the senior editor of the Arab Women Writers Series, Garnet Publishing, for which she received the 1995 New Venture Award. She is a member of the Board of Al-Raida, a feminist journal published by the Lebanese American University, Beirut. Fadia Faqir has written a few short stories and plays. `The Separation Wall', a short story, and `Sofia Blues', a collection of meditations, were published in a collection entitled Magnatic North, New Writing North, December, 2005. `The Separation Wall' will also be published in Dominican Literature and Arab-American and Arab Anglophone Literature edited by Nathalie Handal. Her third novel My Name is Salma is published by Doubleday and will be published in Canada, USA, Denmark, France, Spain and Italy.

Reviews

Mired in political rhetoric, this alarming first novel by a Jordanian native tracks a Palestinian terrorist, his girlfriend and his Israeli interrogator. The subject matter--a terrorist's thought processes, his lethal acts (including the murder of nine Israeli settlers), capture, torture and attendant plunge into madness--is potentially gripping, but Faqir repeatedly proffers graceless, simplistic agitprop instead of careful plotting or characterizations. David, the Israeli interrogator, is a tormented Holocaust survivor, a caricature here whose pleasure is watching a "prisoner's skin change from red-crimson-purple to indigo. When the left side of the body became a mixture of black and purple he would switch to the right. The ultimate was an even colour all over." To Faqir, the Palestinians are like nisanit blossoms: able to survive the heat, the desert flower takes so deep a hold in the ground that it can't be rooted out. Shadeed the terrorist ruminates on peace: "It would never spread over their country until these aggressors stopped polluting their air." His relationship with Eman develops at a fairy-tale-fast gallop; her father, a Palestinian, was hanged in a failed coup to overthrow the Democratic State of Ishmael--apparently Jordan--and Eman believes that she is doomed to lose everyone she loves.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 1990
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 014013333X
• ISBN 13: 9780140133332
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256