Verses of Forgiveness
Publisher
:
Actes Sud
Parution date
:
2001
EAN
:
9782742721412
Description
Verses of Forgiveness, the story of a Palestinian suicide bomber awaiting his hour of death, opens with the proclamation, “I am a terrorist, a dreamer.” This novel unearths the roots of the conflict raging in the Middle East today. It establishes the primitive connection between identity and history with the force of a makeshift time-bomb. While Ahmed prepares an attack on the heart of Israel, the mother he never knew finds him languishing in a brothel. She reveals that his father was a Jew who survived the Holocaust and fled to the Promised Land. Ahmed tells his father’s story and we revisit with him day by day, smell by smell, through the early stages of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the fundamental absurdity of a war built on ashes and political mistakes. Through her use of poetic language, Myriam Antaki makes beauty the ambassador of unnecessary violence and hatred.
Author
Myriam Antaki : Myriam Antaki was born in Syria and currently lives in Alep. She has written three other novels, the last of which, Les Versets du pardon Verses of Forgiveness, is being translated and published in English by The Other Press.
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