Simultaneously scholarly and righteously impassioned.
A speech delivered by the author in September 2023 at Columbia University, with an afterword on Gaza.
“The Palestinian struggle for freedom,” writes British Palestinian novelist Hammad, author of The Parisian and Enter Ghost, “has outlasted the narrative shape of many other anticolonial liberation movements that concluded with independence during the twentieth century, and it is becoming more difficult to hold fast to the old narratives about the power of narrative.” The author opens by referencing Edward Said’s 1975 book, Beginnings, addressing her choice to begin in the middle of stories, specifically “the shifting narrative shape of the Palestinian struggle in its global context.” She views Said, primarily, as a literary scholar, crediting his “engagement with fiction as an heir to a particular kind of humanism…that commits itself to crossing boundaries between cultures and disciplines.” Acknowledging that most of her own writing has been about Palestine, Hammad illustrates this with a story that also demonstrates anagnorisis, which Aristotle described as “a movement from ignorance to knowledge.” She interweaves her thoughts on narrative structure and aims—e.g., “The material we draw from the world needs to undergo some metamorphosis in order to function, or even to live, on the page”; “Literary anagnorisis feels most truthful when it is not redemptive: when it instead stages a troubling encounter with limitation or wrongness”—with examples of comparative literature as well as Palestinian history, including her great-grandfather's life and the continued persecution of Palestinians by Israel. “Narrative shape can comfort and guide our efforts,” writes Hammad, "but we must eventually be ready to shape-shift, to be decentered…in the project of human freedom, which remains undone.” The anti-Zionist afterword addresses Israel’s attack on Gaza nine days after the author’s speech and the ongoing war: “Do they really believe they can obliterate the Palestinian will to life?”
Simultaneously scholarly and righteously impassioned.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024
ISBN: 9780802163929
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Black Cat/Grove
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.
An Egyptian Canadian journalist writes searchingly of this time of war.
“Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.” So writes El Akkad, who goes on to state that one of the demands of modern power is that those subject to it must imagine that some group of people somewhere are not fully human. El Akkad’s pointed example is Gaza, the current destruction of which, he writes, is causing millions of people around the world to examine the supposedly rules-governed, democratic West and declare, “I want nothing to do with this.” El Akkad, author of the novel American War (2017), discerns hypocrisy and racism in the West’s defense of Ukraine and what he views as indifference toward the Palestinian people. No stranger to war zones himself—El Akkad was a correspondent in Afghanistan and Iraq—he writes with grim matter-of-factness about murdered children, famine, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. With no love for Zionism lost, he offers an equally harsh critique of Hamas, yet another one of the “entities obsessed with violence as an ethos, brutal in their treatment of minority groups who in their view should not exist, and self-decreed to be the true protectors of an entire religion.” Taking a global view, El Akkad, who lives in the U.S., finds almost every government and society wanting, and not least those, he says, that turn away and pretend not to know, behavior that we’ve seen before and that, in the spirit of his title, will one day be explained away until, in the end, it comes down to “a quiet unheard reckoning in the winter of life between the one who said nothing, did nothing, and their own soul.”
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593804148
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A sharply different deconstruction of the prevailing orthodoxy, worthy of attention.
Leverett (International Affairs/Pennsylvania State Univ.; Inheriting Syria: Bashir's Trial by Fire, 2005) and his wife, Hillary, argue that, unless it changes, “the United States’ Iran policy is locked in a trajectory…that will ultimately lead to war.”
The authors take on what they identify as “a powerful mythology” that continues to influence U.S. policy toward the Islamic Republic—primarily, the proposition that because it is unpopular, the regime “is in imminent danger of being overthrown.” They offer an alternative to the prevailing view that Khomeini and his supporters hijacked the liberal revolution that began in 1978 and “betrayed the aspirations of those who actually carried out the campaign that deposed the shah.” The Leveretts take issue with American policymakers who propose that the U.S. should advocate the overthrow of the present regime in favor of liberal democracy. They believe in the possibility of negotiating with the present regime. The authors dispute the view that the mullahs have done nothing for the population and lack support, showing how literacy, health and medical care have been upgraded and the economy developed. They highlight present concerns about the Iranian nuclear program, which they claim are exaggerated. They identify the continuing influence of the neoconservatives, who brought about the second Iraq war, and “liberal internationalists,” who are ready to deploy military force in support of human rights. They believe that the time has come for an initiative like Nixon's visit to Beijing to begin a change in course.
A sharply different deconstruction of the prevailing orthodoxy, worthy of attention.Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9419-0
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Metropolitan/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2012
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