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| Yoram Kaniuk |
Confessions of a Good Arab |
| Novel |
Tel Aviv, Kinneret, 1984. 152 pp.
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Confessions of a Good Arab, one of the boldest artistic expressions in Israeli literature, plumbs the depths of the tragedy of the Jews and Arabs who share the same country. Yosef Sherara is the son of an Arab father and a Jewish mother. The book is written in the form of a confession, a kind of family saga, full of mythic elements and larger-than-life characters. Yosef's maternal grandfather is a German-born Jew, who allies himself spiritually to Palestine and its Arab people. When the Nazis come to power in Germany, he travels to Palestine, but his wife cannot adapt to the Middle East and becomes mentally ill. Their daughter takes part in the War of Independence and becomes a national heroine. She marries her father's old friend Azouri, a Palestinian Arab, who is a brilliant man and an expert in the field of the Jewish-Arab conflict. The meeting between the two turns into a titanic love story, the fruit of which is Yosef, born in Paris. In Yosef, an artist, the two traditions meet. His soul is the painful battlefield whereupon the Jewish and Arab elements perennially struggle.
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About the Book
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The Times Literary Supplement wrote: "Magical realism has come to the Middle East....[Kaniuk] has gone enthusiastically overboard and written a very original, provocative, and occasionally savage novel." Other reviewers called it "...highly original and often moving..." (The Philadelphia Inquirer) and "compelling" (The Washington Post). According to The Los Angeles Times, "Kaniuk's fiery and provocative novel is out to fracture the badly set bone that deforms the Middle East."
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