The Image, the Icon, and the Covenant - Softcover

Khalifeh, Sahar

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1566566991 ISBN 13: 9781566566995

Publisher: Interlink Books, 2007

Synopsis

Winner of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature 2006 This award-winning novel is at once a re-casting of the story of the Holy Family, an ode to Arab Jerusalem, and a call for liberation, not just of a nation but for the individual women and men who inhabit it. After abandoning his beloved Mariam when she falls pregnant, and escaping her brothers’ bullets, Ibrahim abandons his own ideals and dreams of becoming a novelist, opting instead to follow his father’s wishes and seek wealth and commercial success abroad. Thirty years later, lonely and disillusioned, Ibrahim returns to Ramallah to retrace the past he tried to leave behind. He sets out on a long and frustrating quest to track down Mariam, which takes him from the West Bank to Israel. Along the way he encounters his son, Michael, a young man with spiritual powers that enable him to see what is unknown and find what has gone missing. Moving and lyrical, Khalifeh’s novel weaves religious and political symbolism into a story of love and loss. At its core is Ibrahim’s—the Palestinian’s—agonizing but unrelenting search for a home.

About this title

About the Author

Sahar Khalifeh was born in Nablus in 1941 and is the author of eight novels. She holds a Ph.D. in women's studies and American literature from the University of Iowa. She divides her time between Amman, Jordan and Nablus, Palestine.

Reviews

In the mid-1960s, Ibrahim, a Palestinian-Muslim school teacher with literary ambitions, takes a job in a small Jordanian village and falls in love with Mariam, a Christian raised in Brazil who has returned to her home village. The problem with this love affair, as Ibrahim realizes in the retrospective voice that dominates the novel, is that he has loved his image of Mariam and has never understood her as a real person. Reality intrudes, however, when Mariam becomes pregnant: Ibrahim is paralyzed by the difficulties a Muslim-Christian marriage presents, and jealous of Mariam's prior adoration of a Brazilian priest. His growing commitment to Palestinian liberation after the 1967 war allows him to justify his return. When he returns to Jordan in 2000—a wealthy, twice-divorced and disillusioned secular Arab—he becomes obsessed with finding Mariam and his unknown son. The title's complexities mirror those of this fugue-like novel, which finds Ibrahim cycling among versions of himself and of Mariam. As Ibrahim's realizations pile up, their irreconcilability becomes a delicate and powerful allegory for Middle Eastern conflict. Palestinian novelist Khalifeh (Wild Thorns), who won the 2006 Naguib Mahfouz medal for literature, offers a challenging take on vexing territory. (Jan.)
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Edition details

• Publisher: Interlink Books
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1566566991
• ISBN 13: 9781566566995
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256