Full name: The Secret Life of Saeed: The Pessoptimist

Author: Emile Habiby Year: 1974 Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: Fiction Purchase/reserch links: Amazon Goodreads LibraryThing ISBNs: 9781566564151 1566564158

This contemporary classic, the story of a Palestinian who becomes a citizen of Israel, combines fact and fantasy, tragedy and comedy. Saeed is the comic hero, the luckless fool, whose tale tells of aggression and resistance, terror and heroism, reason and loyalty that typify the hardships and struggles of Arabs in Israel. An informer for the Zionist state, his stupidity, candor, and cowardice make him more of a victim than a villain; but in a series of tragicomic episodes, he is gradually transformed from a disaster-haunted, gullible collaborator into a Palestinian -- no hero still, but a simple man intent on survival and, perhaps, happiness. Similar books: Wild Thorns by Saa¸¥ar Khalifah Dancing Arabs by Sayed Kashua The Blue Mountain by Meir Shalev Arabesques by Anton Shammas The Loves of Judith by Meir Shalev The Same Sea by Amos Oz Take Me With You by Catherine Ryan Hyde Empire Falls by Richard Russo Anne of Windy Poplars by Lucy Maud Montgomery The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson 2666 by Roberto Bolano Buying the Farm by Kimberly Conn Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver Harbor of the Heart by Katherine Spencer We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates Everyman by Philip Roth The Book of Ruth by Jane Hamilton South of Broad by Pat Conroy