Dancing Arabs

May 3, 2004
Kashua resists stereotype in this slyly subversive, semi-autobiographical account of Arab Israeli life, telling the story of a Palestinian boy who wins a prestigious scholarship to a Jewish high school, but slips into listless malaise as an adult, despising himself, scorning his fellow Arabs and resenting the Israelis. The unnamed narrator spends his childhood in the village of Tira. His grandfather was killed in the 1948 war, and his father was jailed for two years before he was married, accused of blowing up a university cafeteria. The narrator doesn't inherit his father's revolutionary tendencies; he's even ignorant of his own history ("In twelfth grade I understood for the first time what '48 was.... Suddenly I understood that Zionism is an ideology. In civics lessons and Jewish history classes, I started to understand that my aunt from Tulkarm is called a refugee, that the Arabs in Israel are called a minority"). When he goes away to the Jewish boarding school, his greatest desire is to fit in, and he bursts into tears the first time he is stopped at a checkpoint. He never finishes college, taking low-level jobs at an institution for the retarded and a bar. When he finally drifts into marriage to an Arab nursing student, he cringes at her dark skin and soon dreams about taking a lover. He can't even find solace in belief, though he fantasizes about becoming a respected teacher of religion. The drab hopelessness of his life is offset by his self-awareness ("I'm a failure anyway") and by Kashua's deadpan, understated humor. Nearly absurdist at moments, this is a chilling, convincing tale. Agent, Deborah Harris at the Harris/Elon Agency
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Starred review from May 15, 2004
This first novel features a young man who shares the author's Arab-Israeli background. In a more affluent and privileged setting, his hero might have been someone like Kerouac's Sal Paradise-engaged in life's possibilities but avoiding firm commitments. But this Palestinian narrator is filled with fear, hopelessness, and self-loathing. He fails to see the purpose in an existence that is at best marginalized and at worst terrifying. From the time he is admitted to an elite Jewish school, Kashua's hero seeks to become indistinguishable from his Jewish classmates. If one blends in, he reasons, one can avoid delays at roadblocks, removals from buses, and attacks from bullies. Kashua describes Palestinians leading routine lives as professionals and students, as multigenerational families raise children in the midst of military conflict and face futures that are anything but certain. As an outsider, this reviewer finds it difficult to fathom the full extent of the novel's complicated irony and the emotional impact it might have on Arab-Israeli readers. Yet readers far removed from the experiences portrayed by Kashua will gain a more personal view and a deeper sympathy for those born into the decades-long struggle for land and country. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries.-Rebecca Stuhr, Grinnell Coll. Libs., IA

Copyright 2004 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2004
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.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)