Touch - Softcover

Adania Shibli

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1566568072 ISBN 13: 9781566568074

Publisher: Clockroot Books, 2013

Synopsis

"The most talked-about writer on the West Bank."
--Ahdaf Soueif, author of In the Eye of the Sun

Touch centers on a girl, the youngest of nine sisters in a Palestinian family. In the singular world of this novella, this young woman's everyday experiences--watching a funeral procession, fighting with her siblings, learning to read, perhaps falling in love--resonate until they have become as weighty as any national tragedy. The smallest sensations compel, the events of history only lurk at the edges--the question of Palestine, the massacre at Sabra and Shatila. In a language that feels at once natural and alienated, Shibli breaks with the traditions of modern Arabic fiction, creating a work that has been and will continue to be hailed across literatures. Here every ordinary word, ordinary action is a small stone dropped into water: of inevitable consequence. We find ourselves mesmerized one quiet ripple at a time.

About this title

About the Author:

Adania Shibli, novelist, essayist, and playwright, has twice received the A.M. Qattan Foundation's Young Writer Award-Palestine. Her work has been translated into French, German, Italian, Hebrew, and Korean.
Paula Haydar teaches at the University of Arkansas and has translated novels by Elias Khoury, Rachid al-Daif, and Sahar Khalifeh.

From Publishers Weekly:

Starred Review. Celebrated young Palestinian writer Shibli-a playwright, author and essayist now located in the UK-makes her American debut with an exquisite, powerful novella that transports readers to her West Bank homeland. In spare prose, Shibli follows an unnamed little girl, the youngest in a large Palestinian family, as she examines her world and tries to understand her place in it. Though focused on the finest details-flakes of rust against skin, the softness of grass-Shibli takes readers to the center of a family and a culture, using the same careful, dispassionate observation to report everyday events like the father's shaving as she does to depict the death of a sibling in area violence. Like a great volume of poetry, Sibli's first novel (her second is forthcoming from Clockroot) has rhythm and unexpected momentum, and cries for re-reading.

About this edition

• Publisher: Clockroot Books
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1566568072
• ISBN 13: 9781566568074
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 160