- Ibtisām ʿĀzim (?, Palestine / Israel) – Sāriq al-Nawm Gharīb Ḥayfāwī (‘The Sleep Thief: Gharib Haifawi’, 2011) and Sifr al-Ikhtifāʾ (2014, English trans. The Book of Disappearance, 2019).
Sāriq al-Nawm Gharīb Ḥayfāwī reflects on the status of Palestinians in Haifa as strangers in their own city. As the hero Gharīb Ḥayfāwī, born during the 1967 Naksah (see 1967 al-Naksah), feels connected to the place he lives in, but at the same time refused by it. The novel portrays his quest for the meaning of the word ‘Palestine’, while Gharīb becomes vocal about his resistance towards the Israeli oppression. One of the telling scenes in the novel is Gharīb’s nightmare in which he sees his mother as a specimen in the National Museum (reference).
The storyline of Sifr al-Ikhtifāʾ is set in Jaffa and Tel Aviv, where Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs live together but dispute each other’s right to the land. One day, all the Palestinians suddenly disappear from the two cities. While those who are left discuss the reasons and consequences of the initially unsettling disappearance, the Israeli settler Arīyīl moves into his neighbour Alā’s house to in search of explanation. Soon however, the disappearance is forgotten as are all Palestinian memories and narratives.
- Imīl Ḥabībī (1922 – 1996, Palestine / Israel) – Sudāsiyyat al-Ayyām al-Sittah (‘Sextet on the six days’, 1969), Al- Waqāʾiʿ al-Gharībah fī Ikhtifāʾ Saʾīd Abī al-Nahs al-Mutashāʾil, (1974, English trans. The Secret Life of Saeed, the Ill- Fated Pessoptimist, 1985) and Suraya Bint al-Ghūl (1991, English trans. Saraya, the Ogre’s Daughter: A Palestinian Fairy Tale, 2006).
Sudāsiyyat is collection of short stories that recount meetings between the Arab community in Israel and their relatives living elsewhere (reference). Ḥabībī wrote the collection after the 1967 war (see 1967 al-Naksah). It also describes Palestinian families who were reconnected following this war under an expanded Israeli occupation, such as in the story ‘Ḥayn Sʿad Masʿūd bi-Ibn ʿAmahu’, before being separated again (reference).
Al-Waqāʾiʿ al-Gharībah, Ḥabībī’s most famous work, describes the daily life of Arabs in Israel and particularly the absurdities faced by Saʿīd, who is full of contradictions: both a collaborator and an informer working for the state of Israel, as well as a victim of its injustice and abuse: both a humble servant of Israel yet also a supporter of the Palestinian resistance (reference). Saʿīd finds himself caught up in all manner of contradictions and bureaucratic nightmares, making him a ‘pessoptimist’.
Suraya Bint al-Ghūl centres a man who, while fishing, sees the ghost of a girl he used to love as a boy, and becomes obsessed with finding her. His quest leads him to different neighborhoods in and around Haifa, such as the al-Carmel, as well as a journey to his past life and the changes his city has gone through. The novel can be read as a reflection of its author on his life as a writer and political activist (also in L: Culture and Literary Heritage: Folktales).
- Atallah Mansūr (1934-, Palestine / Israel) – Be ʾor Ḥadash (1996, English trans. In a New Light, 1969) tells the story of a Palestinian Israeli Yosef. After his father is killed by unknown perpetrator’s, Yosef is raised by a Jewish acquaintance of his father, until he decides to flee to a Kibbutz with one of the daughters of the family. While the father comes to take the daughter back, Yosef remains and continues life in the Kibbutz, but when he tries to attain membership in the Kibbutz, the question of his identity arises and his social and personal position towards the other Kibbutz members is revised (reference).
- Bashar Murkūs’s (?, Palestine / Israel) play Amākin Ukhrā (‘Other Places’, 2017) questions the identity of diasporic Palestinians exiled from their homeland since 1948 (see 1948 al-Nakbah). Much like in a laboratory, the play analyzes identity from different angles, from afar and from close, and finds that Palestinian exiles and Palestinians who face Israeli occupation share one identity: the diasporic identity. It is though (shared) memories that this identity is constructed (reference).
- Rajāʾ Shaḥādah (1951-, Palestine / Israel) – Where the Line is Drawn: Crossing Boundaries in Occupied Palestine (2017). This novel focusses on the writer’s friendships with Israelis and with one American friend who moved to Israel. It reflects on the friendships in hindsight and describes how they changed over the course of the occupation. While the friends considered their friendship to be a-political, they could not avoid the fact that important events in the Israeli / Palestinian history had its influence on their ever-estranging relationship (reference).
- Anṭūn Shammās (1950-, Palestine / Israel) – ʿArabesḳot (1986, English trans. Arabesques, 1988). This Hebrew-language novel is divided in two narratives, that of ‘The Tale’, in which the narrator recounts his childhood and the lives of his extended family, and the second, ‘The Teller’, which is set in Paris and Iowa and focuses on the narrator’s relationship with a fictional Israeli novelist and several Jewish and Arab women (reference). The first of these represents the ‘oral Arabic’ tradition with its folkloric dimension and ‘Palestinian’ narrative, while the latter a ‘scribal Hebrew’ that intertwines like an arabesque pattern (reference).
- Maḥmūd Shuqayr (1941-, Palestine) – Sūrat Shākīrā (‘Shakira’s image’, 2003). This ironic collection of short stories, which uses both the local Arabic dialect and Hebrew, critiques the misrepresentation and manipulation of the Palestinian narrative as well as globalization and superficial consumer culture that distracts young generations from real and pressing issues (reference). In its title short story, the protagonist, Ṭalḥah Shukīrāt, who lives in Jerusalem, claims a familial relationship with the pop singer Shakira (who he calls Shukriyyah) in an attempt to gain favour with the Israeli soldier Rūnī and bypass the long queues in front of the Interior Ministry (reference). Shakira herself has no voice, she exists as symbolic value admired by Rūnī and used opportunistically by the characters. Other famous individuals are referenced in the other stories, such as in ‘Ibnat khālatī Kūndūlīzā’ (‘My cousin Condoleezza’) (also in S: Social Issues and Societal Change: Globalization and Consumarism).
Refrences:
In order of appearance
- Diyala Najjar. 2012. “Wuqūʿa al-Gharīb ʿalā Nafsihi”, www.jadaloyyah.com, 12 August 2012, https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/26790/وقوع-الغريب-على-نفسه (last accessed 5 February, 2023)
- Roger Allen. 1992. “The Mature Arabic Novel Outside Egypt.” In Modern Arabic Literature. eds. Muḥammad Muṣṭafā Badawī. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 193-223, p. 200
- ʿĀdil al-Asṭah. 2007. “Qirāʾah fī Qiṣṣah Imīl Ḥabībī.” www.diwanalarab.com, 8 October 2007 https://www.diwanalarab.com/%D9%82%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%A1%D8%A9-%D9%81%D9%8A-%D9%82%D8%B5%D8%A9-%D8%A5%D9%85%D9%8A%D9%84
- Kyle Wanberg. 2015. “Secrecy, Lies, and the Exilic Imagination in The Pessoptimist.” MEL 18 (2): 184-201, p. 184
- Mahmoud Kayyal. 2016. Selected Issues in the Modern Intercultural Contacts between Arabic and Hebrew Cultures. Brill’s Series in Jewish Studies 57, Brill: Leiden, p. 137
- Play seen by the author on the 22 of February 2018, in the Monty Kultuurfaktorij, Antwerp, Belgium
- Ursula Lindsay and Marcia Lynx-Qualey, hosts. 2017. “Palestinian literature: regrets, tough choices and teen adventures.” Bulaq Podcast, The Arabist, 8 December 2017, https://www.sowt.com/episodes/bulaq-bwlq—palestinian-literature-regrets-tough-choices-and-teen-adventures (last accessed 26 January 2025)
- Anna Bernard. 2014. Rhetorics of Belonging: Nation, Narration, and Israel/Palestine. Liverpool University Press: Liverpool, p. 139
- Rachel Feldhay Brenner. 1993. “In Search of Identity: The Israeli Arab Artist in Anton Shammas’ ‘Arabesque’.” PMLA108(3): 431-35, p. 440
- Ādil al-Usṭah. 2007. “Maḥmūd Shuqayr wa qiṣṣat ‘Sūrat Shākīrā’.” www.diwanalarab.com, 24 October 2007, https://www.diwanalarab.com/%D9%85%D8%AD%D9%85%D9%88%D8%AF-%D8%B4%D9%82%D9%8A%D8%B1-%D9%88%D9%82%D8%B5%D8%A9.html (last accessed 13 September 2025