DANCING ARABS

Sayed Kashua
Modan Publishers 2002
Harris/Elon Literary Agency
224 pp.

Rights sold:
USA, Grove Atlantic, Inc.;
Holland, Vassallucci;
Germany, Berlin Verlag;
France, Belfond;
Italy, Guanda;
Israel, Modan Publishers
Dramatic Rights: Forma International, Italy

Recipient of the Grinzane Cavour Award 2004 for First Novel (Italy) and one of the Best Books of 2004 by The San Francisco Chronicle - http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/12/12/RVG19A57QS1.DTL

Book description:
Sayed Kashua gives Israeli literature one of its most moving moments: a hero who is totally Palestinian and equally Israeli; entirely Hebrew and entirely Arab; raised in an Arab village and growing up in a Jewish boarding school in Jerusalem, a city both liberated and occupied. Along the way, the hero meanders between two strong women, one called “grandma”, the other “my wife”. Each one teaches him a chapter in love, loyalty, and honesty. They are the anchor that allows him to run from himself, to follow his passions, and most important, to practice his most unusual talent - “to disappear” - the talent that allows him to unveil and to map out the cracks in his soul, and the wild void in the heart of Israeli society.

The debut novel by twenty-eight-year-old Arab-Israeli Sayed Kashua has been praised around the world for its honesty, irony, humor, and its uniquely human portrayal of a young man who moves between two societies, becoming a stranger to both. Kashua’s nameless antihero has big shoes to fill, having grown up with the myth of a grandfather who died fighting the Zionists in 1948, and with a father who was jailed for blowing up a school cafeteria in the name of freedom. When he is granted a scholarship to an elite Jewish boarding school, his family rejoices, dreaming that he will grow up to be the first Arab to build an atom bomb. But to their dismay, he turns out to be a coward devoid of any national pride; his only ambition is to fit in with his Jewish peers who reject him. He changes his clothes, his accent, his eating habits, and becomes an expert at faking identities, sliding between different cultures, schools and languages, and eventually a Jewish lover and an Arab wife. With refreshing candor and self-deprecating wit, Dancing Arabs brilliantly maps one man’s struggle to disentangle his personal and national identities, only to tragically and inevitably forfeit both.

Quotes and reviews:
"I am grateful to you for sending me the remarkable novel, Dancing Arabs, by Sayed Kashua. I think it is an amazing work of fiction. It has integrity and beauty. It rises above the polemics of that searing conflict. And renders the life of that land with a touch of humanity. If the author ever comes this way I would be most grateful to host him at our school for a talk. And if you are in contact with him please pass on my praise on his astonishing achievement."
-- Fouad Ajami, Middle East expert and director of School of International Studies at Johns Hopkins

"Gritty and agile...On any given day, Kashua’s narrator may daydream of becoming the first Arab prime minister, bringing ’peace and love to the region,’ or embracing militant Islam and blowing up Israeli soldiers at a local intersection--only to do neither. As a portrait of a young man’s drift into emotional no man’s land, this novel has the feel of grim truth."—The New York Times Book Review

"Kashua goes beyond the front-page headlines and horrific newspaper photos of Middle East violence to show a different view of what being an Arab is all about."
—The San Francisco Chronicle

“Books like this one, books that tell the stories of war through the eyes of children, are the textbooks for future generations. They carry the cultural information, those memes that are missing from conventional, nonfiction accounts.””—The Los Angeles Times

"Sayed Kashua’s affecting debut novel...evokes the conditions, political and personal, that forge his narrator’s disaffected identity...Kashua can be equally unsparing when it comes to the anti-semitism that pervades the Muslim community and the inequities that plague Arab Israeli culture...[and] succeeds admirably in creating a protagonist adrift between two worlds, neither of which, tragically, can sustain him."—The Miami Herald

"In its moving and mordantly funny depiction of a life lived on the margins of a fundamentally inhospitable society, Dancing Arabs introduces humanity where politics has failed...A grim but affecting debut."—Time Out New York

"An impressive debut novel...[that] stares unflinchingly at the many ugly realities on both sides of an eternal national crisis, and the result is a bracingly candid lamentation."
—The Baltimore Sun

“As Americans we often see the situation in Israel in extremes. We are either condemning suicide bombers and angry settlers or praising idealistic culture-exchange programs; Dancing Arabs offers us a land without heroes or villains, and mocks our pitying tears…[Kashua’s] deadpan innocence makes Dancing Arabs—a personal take on the endless divide between Jews and Arabs in Israel—both hugely entertaining and unexpectedly disturbing.”—LA Weekly

“Dancing Arabs expertly chews through the details of place. Tira, Jerusalem, Palestine, Israel: Kashua breaks these places into pieces, and from those pieces patches together his own narrative. His neighborhoods may torment him still, but they are vividly remembered, painstakingly specific, and blissfully free of hyperbole or cliché…The truth of Dancing Arabs lies not so much in its politics as in its revelation of human fallacy.”
—The Daily Star (Lebanon)

"Slyly subversive...The hopelessness of [the protagonist’s] life is offset by Kashua’s deadpan, understated humor... A chilling, convincing tale."
—Publishers Weekly

“Remarkable…Kashua’s debut is as much about family relationships as it is about familiar political challenges. Despite its dark prognosis, there is a lightness and dry humor that lifts it with the kind of wings its protagonist once hoped for.”
—Booklist

"In its moving and mordantly funny depiction of a life lived on the margins of a fundamentally inhospitable society, Dancing Arabs introduces humanity where politics has failed...A grim but affecting debut."
--Time Out

“A quick, readable, highly engaging debut tale of an Arab-Israeli whose life is one of anger, fear, and broken spirit … never self-indulgent or sentimental … (Kashua’s) story rings out on every page with a compelling sense of human truth.”
--Kirkus Review

“The great innovation in Sayed Kashua’s book is the sense that every line is the whole truth and nothing but the truth…Dancing Arabs reveals, through the unresolved conflict, the rent in the identity of Arab intellectuals and the tragedy of Israeli Arabs who are trying to live here… a beautiful and moving novel.”
--Ha’aretz

“Dancing Arabs is a delight despite its bitter truth. Kashua and his anti-hero laugh and in that is more heroism than in an explosive belt.”
--Neue Zuricher Zeitung

“Sayed Kashua’s frankness and his detailed descriptions give the book the dimensions of a striking satire.”
--Die Welt

“Kashua elevates his dancing Arabs into symbols of his won existence: a life between, where everybody dances with himself.”
--Die Tageszeitung

“A desperate longing for normality in a world gone mad. Absurd? Pragmatic? A strong piece of literature and a courageous author.”
--Berner Zeitung

“…a very funny and very sad book whose only bias is that of a moving honesty.”
--LIRE

“…captivating … Sayed Kashua delivers a testimony of an Israeli society plagued by prejudice…”
--Le Monde des Livres

“…a shocking book … a novel without complacency or wordiness narrate the hell of anguished cohabitation and prejudice that foment fears.”
--La Liberte

“By pushing the situation to the absurd, the author reveals a cruel reality and dreadfully complex geopolitical situation.”
--L’Argus de la presse

“A true portrait, devoid of any rhetoric and self-pity.”
--Tuttolibri

“Sayed Kashua has chosen to speak in the voice of irony and self-irony. An unusual debut.”
--Diario

“Dancing Arabs is a partly autobiographical novel on the difficult identity of Arab-Israelis. Written in Hebrew, it mixes slapstick and desperation, war and daily life, grand political scenarios and sorrowful individual destinies.”
--Panorama


From Booklist
After solving a quiz-show riddle, the young Palestinian protagonist earns the rare opportunity to study at a Jewish university in Jerusalem. There is hope for him, so we suspect, and for his village and people. In Jerusalem, though, he feels the truth of his father’s pessimism ("once an Arab, always an Arab, and you don’t stand a chance") and finds and forfeits forbidden love with Naomi. Yet nationalism, optimism, and his family’s hope that his intelligence will lead to the first Arab atom bomb fizzle out and leave a headachy and resentful middle-aged man, unhappily married to an Arab wife back in the borderlands. Translated from the Hebrew, Kashua’s debut is as much about family relationships as it is about familiar political challenges, and it is remarkable in illustrating one man’s slide into stagnation. Despite its dark prognosis, there is a lightness and dry humor that lifts it with the kind of wings its protagonist once hoped for. Brendan Driscoll
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Coming soon: LET IT BE MORNING by Sayed Kashua (2004)

Vassallucci in Holland,
Guanda in Italy and
Berlin Verlag in Germany
Editions Olivier in France (auction)
Grove in US

The second novel of prize winning (Italian 2004 GRINZANE CAVOUR for First Novel) author Sayed Kashua, confirms his unique place in international literature.

After a series of disappointments in the Jewish city where he lives, the hero, an Arab journalist, returns to the village of his birth in order to rebuild his life with his wife and daughter. To his amazement, he discovers that Arab society has completely changed and he finds himself unable to avoid confrontations with its new order and customs. One morning the Israeli Army enforces a total curfew for no apparent reason and the hero and his family have to decide what it means to be human beings in an obviously inhuman situation. As the story’s drama unfurls itself the hero – and the reader -- are compelled to contend with events and choices cast during an impossible era.

An immediate bestseller since publication.

“One of the most potent and impressive novels that have been written in Hebrew in the last several years.” Ha’aretz

“If you read just two books a year, LET IT BE MORNING should be one of them.” Israel Radio


About the author:

Sayed Kashua, 28 years old, journalist, and T.V. critic, is a Palestinian living in an Arab village, near Jerusalem. He was born in Tira, an Arab village in the Galilee, and studied in a boarding school in Jerusalem and at the Hebrew University.