- Laylā al-Aṭrash (1948-, Palestine / Jordan) – Tarānīm al-Ghawāyah (‘Hymns of temptation’, 2014). The documentary film producer Rāwiyah Abū Najmah returns to Jerusalem for the first time since 1967 (see 1967 al-Naksah: Palestine), after she is granted permission to enter the city to take care of her aging aunt. Her mission is also, however, to make a film about the lives of the city’s inhabitants, and while doing so she discovers the forbidden love story that once existed between her aunt and the Padre. The novel reflects on the history of the city from the Ottoman time to the Israeli occupation and the relation between its inhabitants and its sacred status (also in O: Occupations, Professions and Hobbies: Cinema).
- Sayed Kashua (1975-, Israel / Palestine) – Guf Sheni Yaḥid (2010, English trans. Second Person Singular, 2012). This novel centres a successful Israeli-Arab lawyer working in West-Jerusalem, whose life changes when he finds a note, of which he is convinced is his wife’s, in a second-hand The Kreutzer Sonata by Tolstoy. It seems to indicate that his wife Laila, a social worker in Jerusalem, is having an affair, and the lawyer tries to track down the person mentioned in the book as previous owner, Yonatan. As the story search progresses, it becomes intertwined with that of the Palestinian Amir, who works as the caretaker of the paralyzed Yonatan in Jerusalem. The novel also gives a detailed description of live in Jerusalem.
- Aḥmad Abū Salīm (1965-, Palestine / Jordan) – Kwāntūm (‘Quantum’, 2018). This novel takes place in Jerusalem and is set between 1967 and the 1993 Oslo Accords. It describes the great defeat of 1967 and how it affected the city of Jerusalem, one of the consequences being that its inhabitants each started to emphasize a different element of its past and its identity. To see the city in its fullness and to understand every aspect of its development, the novel proposes a quantum vision is needed, as developed by the quantum theory of Max Planck, hence the title of the novel (reference) (also in 1967 al-Naksah: Palestine).
- ʿAzzām Tawfīq Abū al-Saʿūd’s (1948-, Palestine) novel Sūq al-ʿAṭṭārīn (‘Alley of the perfume vendors’, 2009) and series of four novels Ṣabrī (‘Sabri’, 2006), Hammām al-ʿAyn (‘Dove of the eye’, 2009), Al-Stīfādūr (‘Stifadur’, 2013) and Spīrtīzmā (‘Spirtizma’, 2016) narrate Jerusalem’s recent history.
His novel Sūq al-ʿAṭṭārīn (‘Alley of the perfume vendors’, 2009) shows the changing social and economic fabric in the old part of Jerusalem between the Oslo Accordand the Second Intifada and describes how the political unrest during that period affected the daily lives of the main characters, three elderly men who are long-time friends (reference). One of these, Abū al-ʿAbd, who inherited the trade of perfume vendor, has a daughter who is engaged to Abū Muṣṭafā’s son. A third character is Ibrāhīm al-Sundus, whose family is gradually being pushed out of the Old City (reference).
Of the four novels-series, the first Ṣabrī, is set between 1914 and 1929 and focusses on Fuʾād Ṣabrī, a doctor who studied medicine in France and participated in World War I as part of the Ottoman army, and his son who studied law at Cambridge. The novel depicts the state of Palestine under Ottoman rule as suffering from poverty and injustice at the hands of the Turks, as well as the power competition in Jerusalem between the Khalidi and Husayni families (also in Ottoman Period).
Hammām al-ʿAyn depicts Jerusalem between 1932 and 1937, during the British mandate on Palestine (1918 – 1948). Its story revolves around the family of Abū Maḥmūd, whose son ʿAlī refuses the British confiscation of his father’s rural land and flees to Jerusalem. As the novel follows his trip it introduces the social life of the Palestinians and their suffering under the British Mandate. It also mentions the Jewish immigration, the conflict between the Nashashibi and al-Husayni families, and the migration of some Palestinian families to America (reference).
Al-Stīfādūr covers the time between 1937 and 1945 and includes the Ṣabrī family and the family of Abū Maḥmūd, while the last novel, Spīrtīzmā, covers both the Nakbah and the Naksah and their influence on Palestinian families. The 1967 setback caused the spread of myths and superstitions among all classes of society. The novel also describes the return to Jerusalem of the Ṣabrī family’s son, Yūsuf, after 25 years abroad (reference).
- Maḥmūd Shuqayr’s (1941-, Palestine) collection of short stories Al-Quds Waḥiduha Hunāk (2010, English trans. Jerusalem Stands Alone, 2018). Al-Quds Waḥiduha Hunāk is a series of miniature stories that focusses on the daily life of occupied Jerusalem’s residents. The stories collectively centre a family living together in one building which they are slowly being forced out of their home by a number of unnamed men with long bears called ‘occupiers’ who live behind barbed wire near-by (reference). The miniatures include elements of friendship, love, family arguments and confrontations with a hostile outside world while it also describes Jerusalem’s neighbourhoods and markets.
Refrences:
- Rashād Abū Shāwir. 2018 “Fī ‘Kwāntūm’ al-Riwāʾī Yuḥfar fī al-ʿAmāq.” www.thakafamag.com, 31 July 2018, https://thakafamag.com/?p=14763 (last accessed 30 November 2021)
- Anette Månsson. 2016. “Chapter 11: Claiming Home. Strategies of Realizing Place and Home in two Palestinian Novels,” in Representations and Visions of Homeland in Modern Arabic Literature, eds. Sebastian Günter and Stephan Milich. Georg Olms Verlag: Hildesheim, Zürich, New York. pp. 205-231, p. 219, 220
- Jamīl al-Salḥūt. 2009. “Qirāʾah fī Riwāyah ‘Ḥammām al-ʿAyn’ li-ʿAzzam Tawfīq Abū al-Saʿūd bi-Qalam: Jamīl al-Salḥūt.” www.alwatanvoice.com 29 July 2021 https://pulpit.alwatanvoice.com/content/print/168603%20html (last accessed 21 February 2021)
- Habah Aṣlān. 2016. “Spīrtīzmā, Riqāyah Tuʿarriḍ al-Tārīkh al-Shafawī li-l-Quds.” www.aljazeera.net 11 October 2016 https://www.aljazeera.net/news/alquds/2016/10/11/%D8%B3%D8%A8%D9%8A%D8%B1%D8%AA%D9%8A%D8%B2%D9%85%D8%A7-%D8%B1%D9%88%D8%A7%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D8%AA%D8%B9%D8%B1%D8%B6-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AA%D8%A7%D8%B1%D9%8A%D8%AE%D9%8A-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B4%D9%81%D9%88%D9%8A (last accessed 2 February 2021)
- Ursula Lindsay and Marcia Lynx-Qualey, hosts. 2018. “Stolen in Translation.” Bulaq Podcast, The Arabist, 23 September 2018. https://arabist.net/bulaq/20.html