In Search of Walid Masoud (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780815606468)

Walid Masoud disappears. A Palestinian intellectual, he has been living in Baghdad since the first Israeli War of 1948. As a member of an organization engaged in the armed struggle against Israel, suspicion arises that he has gone underground as part of a political movement. Masoud leaves behind a lengthy but disconnected tape recording of garbled utterances through which Jabra Ibrahim Jabra artfully crafts the basis for the narration. He transforms the transcription of the tape by each of Masoud's comrades into a study of character. Through a series of monologues, each becomes a narrator of his own experience.

Readers of The Ship (also translated by Adnan Haydar and Roger Allen) will remember the ingenious way the political themes emerge through the dialogue between passengers on a ship crossing the Mediterranean from the Arab to the European world. This novel echoes identical subjects: the misperceptions between Western and Islamic cultures, personal landscape as a shaper of culture, and the necessity of political commitment.

A tour de force that places the evolution of the Faulknerian style into a political register, this book is a testament to the brilliance of one of Palestine's preeminent writers.

Author: Jabra Ibrahim Jabra
ISBN-10: 081560646X
ISBN-13: 9780815606468
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Language: English
Published: 08/01/2000
Pages: 302
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.21lbs
Size: 9.29h x 6.25w x 0.89d

Review Citation(s):
Booklist 08/01/2000 pg. 2112
Publishers Weekly 08/28/2000 pg. 56
Kirkus Reviews 09/15/2000 pg. 1315
Library Journal 10/15/2000 pg. 102
Reference and Research Bk News 11/01/2000 pg. 158
Choice 02/01/2001 pg. 1077
Publishers Weekly 08/25/2000