Imagen del autor

Isabella Hammad

Autor de The Parisian

3+ Obras 494 Miembros 18 Reseñas

Sobre El Autor

Créditos de la imagen: RCW Literary Agency

Obras de Isabella Hammad

The Parisian (2019) 393 copias
Enter Ghost (2023) 100 copias
Il parigino (2021) 1 copia

Obras relacionadas

We Wrote In Symbols: Love and Lust By Arab Women Writers (2021) — Contribuidor — 16 copias

Etiquetado

Conocimiento común

Fecha de nacimiento
1991
Género
female
Nacionalidad
UK
Palestine
País (para mapa)
UK
Lugar de nacimiento
London, England, UK
Lugares de residencia
Brooklyn, New York, USA

Miembros

Reseñas

It's 1914 and Midhat Kamal is travelling from his home in Nablus (now on the West Bank, then part of the Ottoman Empire) to study medicine at Montpellier. Lodging with the Molineu family he is soon attracted to the daughter Jeanette, and gradually his feelings are reciprocated. But Midhat's chance discovery that Docteur Molineu, a social anthropologist, is in fact studying him as an anthropological specimen for his paper 'The Effect of a New Language on a Primitive Brain' leads to a rupture between the two:

He felt a cramp in his stomach. He was a guest, but the host had trespassed. And he too had trespassed, and transgressed, with the host's daughter. Whose then was the crime? The spectre of his ignorance rose now before him. He thought he knew their public codes now, more or less — but the private ones? He had thought himself in the bosom of the family, capable — almost — of sitting in a chair in the study. He had thought it made no difference. But if he was the father's subject, how could he be the daughter's husband? One did not study one's sons-in-law.


When Jeanette turns away from him to support her father Midhat knows that he can no longer stay in the house and, abandoning his medical studies, he leaves for Paris ....

The war ends, Midhat returns to Nablus, the Ottoman Empire collapses and change is in the air in the city of Nablus. And the book follows Midhat's life as the world changes around him, almost until the start of Second World War. But his time in Paris and his early love for Jeanette continue to influence his life in unexpected ways ...

This is a well written book, but there are major faults with its construction in my opinion. There seem to be three novels competing for attention in [The Parisian] whose individual themes do not necessarily sit well together:
- a memoir of Midhat Kamala's life
- a history of Palestine and its politics between 1914 and 1936. This requires bringing in more characters and events as Midhat himself is somewhat apolitical.
- a social history of the inhabitants of Nablus and the different peoples making up its population

Any one of those themes could have worked well, but they in combination there are just too many characters, most of whom are not well defined, and too many unconnected events. A book that needed a really good editor.
… (más)
 
Denunciada
SandDune | 13 reseñas más. | Feb 4, 2024 |
Hammad provides a relatable description of what everyday life is like in this area of perpetual conflict. The reader can see how the conflict is both internal and external. I found the most interesting parts those which focused on the sisters and their family and at the same time I was frustrated by the lean character development.
 
Denunciada
ccayne | 3 reseñas más. | Dec 27, 2023 |
4.5 rounded up
 
Denunciada
mmcrawford | 13 reseñas más. | Dec 5, 2023 |
Even without my shameful lack of knowledge of Shakespeare, this was a beautifully written, profound rendering of how difficult living in Israel has become for Palestinian Arabs. It felt so real I kept thinking it was a memoir.
 
Denunciada
bobbieharv | 3 reseñas más. | Aug 21, 2023 |

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Estadísticas

Obras
3
También por
1
Miembros
494
Popularidad
#50,038
Valoración
½ 3.4
Reseñas
18
ISBNs
38
Idiomas
5

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