Arabesques (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Anton Shammas
- First Published: 1986
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: 1936 to 1982, with flashbacks to earlier periods
- Setting: Israel, Paris, and Iowa City
- Principal Characters: Anton Shammas, Uncle Yusef, Surrayah Sa’id, Michael Abyad, Yehoshua Bar-On
- Genres: Long fiction, Autobiographical fiction
- Subjects: 1950’s, 1960’s, 1970’s, Family or family life, Memory, Twentieth century, 1940’s, 1930’s, 1980’s, Christianity, Identity, Israel or Israelis, Palestinian Arabs, Land settlement, Arabs
- Locales: Paris, France, Israel, Iowa City, IA
According to common wisdom, most first novels are autobiographies in disguise. Arabesques, however, the first novel of Anton Shammas, a Christian Arab reared in Israeli-occupied Palestine, goes against the grain, for it is clearly a fiction—a patchwork quilt of legend, fact, fantasy, and history—which proclaims its heterogeneous status as both autobiography and novel. As its punning title indicates, Arabesques is a labyrinthine design that weaves together the disparate, somewhat inchoate stories and memories of the inhabitants of Fassuta, a village “built on the...
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