Ushan's Reviews > Arabesques

This is the first ever Hebrew-language novel by an Arab author. It is a chronicle of an Arab Christian family living in the Galilee, in a village built on the ruins of a Crusader castle, which in turn was built on the ruins of an ancient Jewish village, from the 1930s into the 1980s. A character is angry at the world's indignation at the Sabra and Shatilla massacre, in which Christians murdered Muslims; he says that when Muslims murdered Christians, the world didn't care. A girl can see the future in an olive oil slick on a saucer of water. At the end it is revealed that an aunt raped a girl adopted from a Beirut orphanage; when the girl grew up, she converted to Islam and married an imprisoned PLO fighter. Some chapters are about the author of the first ever Hebrew-language novel by an Arab author going to the United States for some literary convention together with an Israeli Jewish author, and arguing about politics with him.