{"product_id":"the-children-of-the-ghetto-i-isbn-9781939810137","title":"The Children of the Ghetto: I","description":"\u003cb\u003eLit by the sublime beauty and tragedy of classical Arabic poetry, a Palestinian falafel seller in New York sets out to shape fragments of his family history\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWeaving history, memory, and poetry, this unforgettable novel—and the 1st book in a trilogy—provides a sprawling  memorial to the Nakba and the strangled lives left in its wake. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLong exiled in New York, Palestinian ex-pat Adam Dannoun thought he knew  himself. But an encounter with Blind Mahmoud, a father figure from his  childhood, changes everything. It is when Adam encounters his former teacher that Adam discovers the story he must tell.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMa’moun’s testimony brings Adam back to the first years of his life in the ghetto of Lydia, in Palestine, where his family endured thirst, hunger, and terror in the aftermath of unspeakable horror.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith unmatched literary craft and empathy, Khoury peels away layers of lost stories and repressed memories to unveil Adam’s story.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOscillating between two narrators—the self-reflexive \"Elias Khoury\" and Adam himself—\u003ci\u003eChildren of the Ghetto: My Name is Adam\u003c\/i\u003e engages real (and invented) scholarly texts, Khoury’s own work, and Adam’s lost notebooks in an intertextual account of a life shadowed by atrocity.\"Khoury engages his own oeuvre in playful metafictional ways, along with real and invented scholarly texts, and larger Palestinian and Israeli literary histories to which this book is a timely and essential contribution. He rejects didacticism — “My story isn’t an attempt to prove something” — pirouetting between saying and unsaying, creating a mass of competing meanings from which Adam’s tormented psychology emerges. If Khoury makes any argument, however, it is that the expression of an “unadorned truth” is impossible, since all language is symbolic and metaphoric; words are weighed down by their histories... Khoury gives us a vivid glimpse of the unspeakable.\" — \u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eNew York Times Book Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Khoury insists that it is impossible to separate the stories of Palestinian and Jewish victimization, but his efforts to accompany the silence of the victims with their stories provide a generous and expansive terrain to think of histories of violence, of their remnants in the present, and of the complexities of survival.\" \u003cb\u003e— \u003ci\u003eWorld Literature Today\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"For Khoury, who was born in 1948 and whose life has been marked by almost continuous war, \u003ci\u003eMy Name is Adam\u003c\/i\u003e marks the achievement of a long-held wish, dating back to his work as a member of Fatah in the late sixties and early seventies, to write a great epic about the Nakba ... (Khoury) listen(s) to the way that Palestinians have lived with the history of catastrophe, not by creating alternative narratives, but by cultivating silence and secrecy, shoring up fragments against their ruin.\" — \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eAsymptote\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \"\u003ci\u003eMy Name is Adam\u003c\/i\u003e is an imaginative, prescient novel that lives within the literary, artistic and historical threads of Palestinian history.\" \u003ci\u003e—\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eJoseph Schreiber\u003ci\u003e, \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eRough Ghosts\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\"My Name is Adam\u003c\/i\u003e is framed as the notebooks of Palestinian writer Adam Dannoun . . . Each of the chapters from the unfinished novel are subtitled 'Point of Entry,' an echo of the process of writing a novel, or of creating an identity, or of navigating the many checkpoints in a segregated and securitized Palestine . . . The other notebooks are Adam’s personal account . . . Adam gathers stories from the community, peeling back layers of stifled memory. These sections feel more urgent and self-assured . . . narratively messier, darker, and more ambiguous.\" — \u003cb\u003eJames Folta, \"A Small Press Book We Love,\" \u003ci\u003eLiterary Hub\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePraise for Elias Khoury:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"There has been powerful fiction about Palestinians and by Palestinians, but few have held to the light the myths, tales and rumors of both Israel and the Arabs with such discerning compassion. In Humphrey Davies' sparely poetic translation, \u003ci\u003eGate of the Sun\u003c\/i\u003e is an imposingly rich and realistic novel, a genuine masterwork.\" \u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e-- New York Times Book Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Khoury is one of the most innovative novelists in the Arab world.\" \u003ci\u003e-\u003cb\u003e- Washington Post Book World\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Elias Khoury is an artist giving voice to rooted exiles and trapped refugees, to dissolving boundaries and changing identities, to radical demands and new languages.\" \u003cb\u003e-- Edward W. Said\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"We need the voice of Elias Khoury--detailed, exquisite, humane--more than ever. Read him.\" \u003cb\u003e-- Naomi Shihab Nye\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A writer of panoramic scope and ambition.\" \u003cb\u003e-- Azadeh Moaveni, \u003ci\u003eFinancial Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eElias Khoury \u003c\/b\u003e(1948-2024) was a novelist, journalist, playwright, and lifelong activist for social justice. His novel \u003ci\u003eGate of the Sun, \u003c\/i\u003ecalled 'a genuine masterwork' by the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times, \u003c\/i\u003ewas named Best Book of the Year by \u003ci\u003eLe Monde Diplomatique, \u003c\/i\u003ethe \u003ci\u003eSan Francisco Chronicle\u003c\/i\u003e, and the\u003ci\u003e Christian Science Monitor\u003c\/i\u003e. Also available through Archipelago: \u003ci\u003eYalo\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eAs Though She Were Sleeping \u003c\/i\u003e(winner of France's Arabic Novel Prize),\u003ci\u003e Broken Mirrors, \u003c\/i\u003eand\u003ci\u003e White Masks.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eHumphrey Davies \u003c\/b\u003eis a translator of Arabic fiction, historical, and classical texts. His translations include Elias Khoury's \u003ci\u003eYalo,\u003c\/i\u003e Naguid Mahfouz's \u003ci\u003eThebes at War \u003c\/i\u003eand Midaqq Alley, Alla Al-Aswany's \u003ci\u003eThe Yacoubian Building \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eFriendly Fire\u003c\/i\u003e, Hamdy el-Gazzar's \u003ci\u003eBlack Magic\u003c\/i\u003e, Mohamed Mustagab's \u003ci\u003eTales of Dayrut\u003c\/i\u003e, and the four-volume 19th century Arabic experimental novel,\u003ci\u003e Leg over Leg\u003c\/i\u003e, by Faris Al-Shidyaq. A two-time winner of the Banipal Prize, he is also the recipient of the English PEN Writers In Translation Award. Davies lives in Cairo.","brand":"Archipelago","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300663546085,"sku":"NP9781939810137","price":25.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781939810137.jpg?v=1767738669","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-children-of-the-ghetto-i-isbn-9781939810137","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}