Product Description

A young Palestinian named Usama returns from working in the Gulf to support the resistance movement. His mission is to blow up buses transporting Palestinian workers into Israel. Shocked to discover that many of his fellow citizens have adjusted to life under military rule, Usama exchanges harsh words with friends and family. Despite uncertainty he sets out to accomplish his mission ...with disastrous consequences. Originally published in Jerusalem, Wild Thorns is the first Arab novel to offer a glimpse of social and personal relations under Israeli occupation. Featuring unsentimental portrayals of everyday life, its deep sincerity, uncompromising honesty and rich emotional core plead elegantly for the cause of survival in the face of oppression.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1694550 in Books
• Published on: 2005-06-17
• Original language: Arabic
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

From Kirkus Reviews
Wild Thorns ($12.95 paperback original; Jan.; 208 pp.; 1-56656-336-4). An earnest Arabic novel, first published in 1976, that dramatizes the reactions of Palestinian nationalists to Israeli occupation of the West Bank, an action that has turned many of their countrymen into nomads dutifully commuting to alien territory to work ( . . . the people had become soft, been brainwashed with lies and Israeli cash). Khalifehs initial focus on Usama, a young Palestinian returned home to find his relatives compromised in this way, yields to more diffused depictions of several other characters with whom he finds himself conspiring to blow up buses transporting day-workers. The conspiracy raises havoc with the storys formal unity but does enable it to portray credibly a troubling spectrum of understandably extreme responses to disenfranchisement and oppression. -- Copyright ©2000, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review
'An impressive narrative of life in the West Bank in which simple profundities are asserted powerfully and poetically.' Morning Star

About the Author
Sahar Khalifeh was born in Nablus in 1941. She entered into a traditional arranged marriage at 18, and after 13 years left her husband and began writing. Her first novel was confiscated by the Israelis, the second was first published in Cairo. She taught at the University of Iowa and Bir Zeit University, the premier institution of Palestinian higher education. She founded the Women's Affairs Center in Nablus, with additional branches in Gaza City and Amman. Wild Thorns is her third novel.