Just Like a River: from Syria (Arris World Fiction) - Softcover

Muhammed Kamil Al-Khatib

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1844370038 ISBN 13: 9781844370030

Publisher: Arris Books, 2003

Synopsis

hought by many Syrians to be the most influential novel of its time, this first novel of Muhammad Kamil al-Khatib is a riveting examination of Syrian political and social life during the 1980s. With a multi-voiced narration carried, like a river, from one voice to another, al-Khatib paints concise, vivid portraits of a disparate group of people in Damascus, ranging from an older officer in the Syrian army, to a university student coming to terms with her sexuality in a traditional context, to a British Orientalist on sabbatical, to a disillusioned activist who must reconcile his ideals with the realities of war and city life. Though the particularities of the explored lives may be quintessentially Syrian, the struggle between the generations, between men and women, between country and city, and between victor and vanquished are international in scope.

About this title

About the Author

A prominent, independent Syrian intellectual,Muhammad Kamil al-Khatib is perhaps best known for his intellectual and critical works. He is also the author of three acclaimed novels and many short stories.

Michelle Hartman holds a Ph.D. in Arabic literature from Oxford and currently teaches at Hofstra University in New York. While at the University of Damascus on a Fulbright, she met co-translator Maher Barakat., an attorney now living in Canada.

From Booklist

The first novel by one of Syria's foremost writers and intellectuals arrives in English 19 years later with its luster little diminished. Khatib employs a filmlike structure to maximize narrative economy ("jump-cutting" between episodes without noting connections) and the significance of incidents. Each chapter focuses on a single character during a single episode of the courtship of the college-educated daughter of a progressive middle-class Damascus family by a university teacher and scholar with radical opinions. She likes him, he likes her, her family likes him, his friends think she's perfect for him--and it doesn't work out. The reasons it doesn't are characteristic of a developing Third World country in which new expectations outstrip entrenched realities, and old habits fail new possibilities. For instance, the girl's father has raised her to be a modern woman, but when she challenges her suitor's diffidence by turning to an English professor, the father throws her out of the house in a burst of angry patriarchy. A sad, extraordinarily instructive work of social-psychological realism. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Arris Books
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 1844370038
• ISBN 13: 9781844370030
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 128