In the Nagib Mahfouz award-winning novel 2006, the celebrated Palestinian Sahar Khlaifeh has penned what is at once a re-casting of the story of the Holy Family, a lyrical ode to Arab Jerusalem, and a call for liberation, not just of a nation but for the individual women and men who inhabit it. After abandoning his beloved Mariam when she falls pregnant, and escaping her brothers' bullets, Ibrahim abandons his own ideals and dreams of becoming a novelist, opting instead to follow his father's wishes, and seek wealth and commercial success abroad. Thirty years later, lonely and disillusioned, Ibrahim returns to Ramallah to retrace the past he tried to leave behind. He sets out on a long and frustrating quest to track down Mariam, Along the way he encounters his son, Michael, a young man with spiritual powers that enable him to see what is unknown and find what has gone missing. Moving and lyrical, Khalifeh's novel weaves religious and political symbolism into a story of love and loss. At its core is Ibrahim's-the Palestinian's-agonizing but unrelenting search for a home.
About the Author: Sahar Khalifeh Is considered the foremost Palestinian author and feminists in the Arab world, widely acclaimed for being the first feminist Palestinian writer, and for her sensitive, economical and lucid style. Her fame extends beyond Palestinian and Arab boarders, as her translations in many languages attest. After the defeat of the Arab states in the 1967 war against Israel, and in the midst of what Khalifeh describes as a "miserable, devastating" marriage, Khalifeh began to write her first novel and severed her marriage against of the norms of both her family and Palestinian society. The Arab defeat in the war of 1967 spurred Khalifeh towards new modes of thinking and creativity which led her greatly towards furthering her writing career. Praise from the Press Sahar Khalifeh "is the Virginia Woolf of Palestinian - Arabic literature." Borsenblatt "Her characters are so real you can actually relate to them by mistaking them for someone you know." The Daily Star - Jordan "The one Arab novelist who has written one novel after another to show the inseparability of feminist issues from social and political concerns is the Palestinian novelist Sahar Khalifeh, whom I consider the best Arab woman novelist in the twentieth century." Professor Buthaina Shaaban