Volume 35, Number 6 · April 14, 1988
News from Elsewhere
By Irving Howe
Arabesques
by Anton Shammas, translated by Vivian Eden
Harper and Row, 263 pp., $16.95
Anton Shammas is a Christian Arab born in the Galilee who has written his first novel in Hebrew. Defining himself not just legally but also culturally as an Israeli, he has said that the book is his 'real identity card'—though a careful reading of Arabesques may persuade one that this identity card is not so readily decipherable: it contains a good share of ambiguities. Qualified Hebrew readers, while admiring Shammas's feat, report that in the original his style is somewhat ornate; but if so, the translator has nicely chastened the prose into workable English. Unavoidably Arabesques raises some irksome though deeply interesting questions about Israeli literature, what it is and should be. Insofar as Shammas's novel suggests a 'larger' cultural significance, it is that a complex syncretism, ranging from Bialystok to the Galilee, seems to be evolving in Israeli literature.
Review, 1884 words
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