My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness: A Poet's Life in the Palestinian Century - Hardcover

Hoffman, Adina

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300141505 ISBN 13: 9780300141504

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2009

Synopsis

Beautifully written, and composed with a novelist’s eye for detail, this book tells the story of an exceptional man and the culture from which he emerged.

 

Taha Muhammad Ali was born in 1931 in the Galilee village of Saffuriyya and was forced to flee during the war in 1948. He traveled on foot to Lebanon and returned a year later to find his village destroyed. An autodidact, he has since run a souvenir shop in Nazareth, at the same time evolving into what National Book Critics Circle Award–winner Eliot Weinberger has dubbed “perhaps the most accessible and delightful poet alive today.”

 

As it places Muhammad Ali’s life in the context of the lives of his predecessors and peers, My Happiness offers a sweeping depiction of a charged and fateful epoch. It is a work that Arabic scholar Michael Sells describes as “among the five ‘must read’ books on the Israel-Palestine tragedy.” In an era when talk of the “Clash of Civilizations” dominates, this biography offers something else entirely: a view of the people and culture of the Middle East that is rich, nuanced, and, above all else, deeply human.

About this title

About the Author

Adina Hoffman is the author of House of Windows: Portraits from a Jerusalem Neighborhood. Her essays and criticism have appeared in the Nation, the Washington Post, and the Times Literary Supplement and on the BBC. One of the founders and editors of Ibis Editions, she lives in Jerusalem.

Review

Named one of the top ten biographies of 2009 by Booklist (booklist)

Selected as one of best 20 books of the year by the Seminary Co-op (The Front Table)

“[A] superb biography ... a remarkable achievement.”—Pankaj Mishra, New York Review of Books (New York Review of Books)

“[A] poignant, persuasive biography.”—Choice (Choice 2009-07-01)

“[This book] reads like a novel... a biography of a Palestinian writer and the sociopolitical events that informed and shaped him as well as a look at Palestinian cultural and literary history. But it is poetry that beats at the book’s heart—the way it moves inside of Muhammad Ali, around him, the way it surprises him and questions him as he questions it.”—The American Scholar (American Scholar)

"A triumph of sympathetic imagination, dogged research and impassioned writing. More than the story of one man's life [My Happiness] brings to light entire strata of historical and cultural experience that have been neglected or purposefully covered over. For readers of English there is no comparable work."–Robyn Creswell, The National

(The National)

“Vivid and intimate, engrossing and full of memorable characters. Every scene [Hoffman] sketches comes alive.... Taha Muhammad Ali is fortunate to have had ... [her to] tell his story with such eloquence.”—Haaretz

(Haaretz)

“A rich tapestry of the personal, the literary and the political, skillfully woven by a sympathetic writer ... Hoffman's intense but often humorous book is a powerful reminder of the singularity and complexity of this most intractable of conflicts and of the ability of the human spirit to be creative in adversity."—The Guardian

(The Guardian)

“Luminous .... Looking past the usual strident politics, Hoffman presents readers with a subtle, moving evocation of the human realities of the Palestinian experience, rooted in land and memory.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review

(Publisher's Weekly)

“[Hoffman] has learned the language, prowled civilian and military archives, walked the ground and interviewed countless individuals, probing their memories of cataclysmic events occurring more than a half-century ago. The result is not just a biography of a remarkable man, but a focused history of a region.... A lovingly researched, well-rendered portrait.”—Kirkus Reviews

(Kirkus Reviews)

Edition details

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0300141505
• ISBN 13: 9780300141504
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 464