world literature and literary criticism - Lynne Rienner Publishers

Palestine’s Children:
Returning to Haifa and Other Stories
Ghassan Kanafani,
translated by Barbara Harlow and Karen E. Riley
“Palestine’s Children offers the concerned reader an excellent work
wherein the translation maintains the powerful spirit that animates the
Arabic original.” —AIDA A. BAMIA, JOURNAL OF THIRD WORLD STUDIES
“Politics and the novel,” Ghassan Kanafani once wrote, “are an
indivisible case.” Fadl al-Naqib reflected that Kanafani “wrote the
Palestine story, then he was written by it.” His narratives offer
entry into the Palestinian experience of a conflict that has
anguished the people of the Middle East for more than a century.
At once lyrical, uplifting, and tragic, the novella and stories in
Kanafani’s Palestine’s Children explore the need to recover the past,
the lost homeland, by action. They emerged from the author’s
keen understanding of a bitter political situation. But their deeper
gift is to reveal in literature the plight of oppressed peoples everywhere.
This entirely new edition includes the translators’ contextual
introduction and a short biography of the author.
Born in Acre (northern Palestine) in 1936, Ghassan Kanafani
was a prominent spokesman for the Popular Front for the Liberation
of Palestine and founding editor of its weekly magazine Al-
Hadaf. His novels and short stories have been published in sixteen
languages. He was killed in Beirut in 1972 in the explosion of his
booby-trapped car.
CONTENTS: Ghassan Kanafani: A Biographical Essay—K.E. Riley. Introduction—K.E.
Riley and B. Harlow. The Slope. Paper from Ramleh. A Present
for the Holiday. The Child Borrows His Uncle’s Gun and Goes East to
Safad. Doctor Qassim Talks to Eva About Mansur Who Has Arrived in
Safad. Abu al-Hassan Ambushes an English Car. The Child, His Father and
the Gun Go to the Citadel at Jaddin. The Child Goes to the Camp. The
Child Discovers that the Key Looks Like an Axe. Suliman’s Friend Learns
Many Things in One Night. Hamid Stops Listening to the Uncles’ Stories.
Guns in the Camp. He Was a Child that Day. Six Eagles and a Child.
Returning to Haifa.
2000/202 pages LC: 00-024783
ISBN: 0-89410-890-5 pb £10.50 / $13.95
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